What does the trace of the stress-energy tensor represent?

jfy4 · Oct 27, 2011

Hi,

Let [itex]T_{\alpha\beta}[/itex] be the stress-energy momentum tensor. What does [itex]g_{\alpha\beta}T^{\alpha\beta}[/itex] mean? I have always thought of the Ricci tensor and the SEM as the same thing essentially, but the Ricci scalar essentially assigns a number to the curvature of the manifold, what does [itex]T[/itex] say?

Thanks,

atyy · Oct 27, 2011

I don't know in GR, but Nordstrom's scalar gravitation, the first consistent relativistic theory of gravity, can be reformulated using the Ricci Scalar and the trace SEM. It doesn't match observation, but it's historically interesting.

See Eq 16 of http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0405030

atyy · Oct 28, 2011

Another random fact is that CFTs and Maxwell's equations have traceless SEMs.

jfy4 · Oct 31, 2011

Thanks atyy for those references and tit-bits. I'm going to bump to see if I can get anything else.

What does the trace of the stress-energy tensor represent?

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