Gravitational mass of composite systems

Magdalena Zych, Łukasz Rudnicki, Igor Pikovski

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

23 Scopus citations

Abstract

The equivalence principle in combination with the special relativistic equivalence between mass and energy, E=mc2, is one of the cornerstones of general relativity. However, for composite systems a long-standing result in general relativity asserts that the passive gravitational mass is not simply equal to the total energy. This seeming anomaly is supported by all explicit derivations of the dynamics of bound systems and is only avoided after time-averaging. Here we rectify this misconception and derive from first principles the correct gravitational mass of a generic bound system in an external gravitational field. Our results clarify a lasting conundrum in general relativity and show how the weak and strong equivalence principles naturally manifest themselves for composite systems. The results are crucial for describing new effects due to the quantization of the interaction between gravity and composite systems.

Original languageEnglish
Article number104029
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume99
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - 15 May 2019

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