Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1412.8655

Newton-Cartan Gravity in Noninertial Reference Frames

Leo Rodriguez·James St. Germaine-Fuller·Sujeev Wickramasekara
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

We study properties of Newton-Cartan gravity under transformations into all noninertial, nonrelativistic reference frames. The set of these transformations has the structure of an infinite dimensional Lie group, called the Galilean line group, which contains as a subgroup the Galilei group. We show that the fictitious forces of noninertial reference frames are naturally encoded in the Cartan connection transformed under the Galilean line group. These noninertial forces, which are coordinate effects, do not contribute to the Ricci tensor which describes the curvature of Newtonian spacetime. We show that only the $00$-component of the Ricci tensor is non-zero and equal to ($4\pi$ times) the matter density in any inertial or noninetial reference frame and that it leads to what may be called Newtonian ADM mass. While the Ricci field equation and Gauss law are both fulfilled by the same physical matter density in inertial and linearly accelerating reference frames, there appears a discrepancy between the two in rotating reference frames in that Gauss law holds for an effective mass density that differs from the physical matter density. This effective density has its origin in the simulated magnetic field that appears in rotating frames, highlighting a rather striking difference between linearly and rotationally accelerating reference frames. We further show that the dynamical equations that govern the simulated gravitational and magnetic fields have the same form as Maxwell's equations, a surprising conclusion given that these equations are well-known to obey special relativity (and $U(1)$-gauge symmetry), rather than Galilean symmetry.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcmath-phmath.MP

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Leo Rodriguez, James St. Germaine-Fuller, Sujeev Wickramasekara. 2014-12-26. Newton-Cartan Gravity in Noninertial Reference Frames. https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.8655

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗