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arXiv · 2109.06864

On the energy of gravitational waves

Rong-Gen Cai·Xing-Yu Yang·Long Zhao
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Abstract

The energy of gravitational waves is a fundamental problem in gravity theory. The existing descriptions for the energy of gravitational waves, such as the well-known Isaacson energy-momentum tensor, suffer from several defects. Due to the equivalence principle, the gravitational energy-momentum can only be defined quasilocally, being associated with a closed spacelike 2-surface bounding a region. We propose a new approach to derive the energy of gravitational waves $directly$ from the quasilocal gravitational energy. Such an approach is natural and consistent with the quasilocality of gravitational energy-momentum.

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Rong-Gen Cai, Xing-Yu Yang, Long Zhao. 2021-09-13. On the energy of gravitational waves. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-022-02972-x

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