The group aspect in the physical interpretation of general relativity theory

Abstract

When, at the end of the year 1915, both Einstein and Hilbert arrived at what were named the field equations of general relativity, both of them thought that their fundamental achievement entailed, inter alia, the realisation of a theory of gravitation whose underlying group was the group of general coordinate transformations. This group theoretical property was believed by Einstein to be a relevant one from a physical standpoint, because the general coordinates allowed to introduce reference frames not limited to the inertial reference frames that can be associated with the Minkowski coordinate systems, whose transformation group was perceived to be restricted to the Poincaré group. Two years later, however, Kretschmann published a paper in which the physical relevance of the group theoretical achievement in the general relativity of 1915 was denied. For Kretschmann, since any theory, whatever its physical content, can be rewritten in a generally covariant form, the group of general coordinate transformations is physically irrelevant. This is not the case, however, for the group of the infinitesimal motions that bring the metric field in itself, namely, for the Killing group. This group is physically characteristic of any given spacetime theory, since it accounts for the local invariance properties of the considered manifold, i.e., for its ``relativity postulate''. In the present chapter it is shown what are the consequences for the physical interpretation of some of these solutions whose relativity postulate is of intermediate content, when Kretschmann's standpoint is consistently adhered to.