arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Friedrich W. Hehl.
We point on a different possible explanation of the observations reported recently by Nodland and Ralston, PRL 78 (1997) 3043 [astro-ph/9704196]. The dipole anisotropy of the polarization of radiation from the distant radio sources can be caused by the global cosmic rotation. This explanation is of purely geometric origin and is completely within the conventional physics.
The form of Maxwell's theory is well known in the framework of general relativity, a fact that is related to the applicability of the principle of equivalence to electromagnetic phenomena. We pose the question whether this form changes if torsion and/or nonmetricity fields are allowed for in spacetime. Starting from the conservation laws of electric charge and magnetic flux, we recognize that the Maxwell equations themselves remain the same, but the constitutive law must depend on the metric and, additionally, may depend on quantities related to torsion and/or nonmetricity. We illustrate our results by putting an electric charge on top of a spherically symmetric exact solution of the metric-affine gauge theory of gravity (comprising torsion and nonmetricity). All this is compared to the recent results of Vandyck.
The translational Chern-Simons type three-form coframe torsion on a Riemann-Cartan spacetime is related (by differentiation) to the Nieh-Yan four-form. Following Chandia and Zanelli, two spaces with non-trivial translational Chern-Simons forms are discussed. We then demonstrate, firstly within the classical Einstein-Cartan-Dirac theory and secondly in the quantum heat kernel approach to the Dirac operator, how the Nieh-Yan form surfaces in both contexts, in contrast to what has been assumed previously.
The notions of stress and hyperstress are anchored in 3-dimensional continuum mechanics. Within the framework of the 4-dimensional spacetime continuum, stress and hyperstress translate into the energy-momentum and the hypermomentum current, respectively. These currents describe the inertial properties of classical matter fields in relativistic field theory. The hypermomentum current can be split into spin, dilation, and shear current. We discuss the conservation laws of momentum and hypermomentum and point out under which conditions the momentum current becomes symmetric.
Examples in which spacetime might become non-Riemannian appear above Planck energies in string theory or, in the very early universe, in the inflationary model. The simplest such geometry is metric-affine geometry, in which {\it nonmetricity} appears as a field strength, side by side with curvature and torsion. In matter, the shear and dilation currents couple to nonmetricity, and they are its sources. After reviewing the equations of motion and the Noether identities, we study two recent vacuum solutions of the metric-affine gauge theory of gravity. We then use the values of the nonmetricity in these solutions to study the motion of the appropriate test-matter. As a Regge-trajectory like hadronic excitation band, the test matter is endowed with shear degrees of freedom and described by a world spinor.
We discuss the choice of the Lagrangian in the Poincaré gauge theory of gravity. Drawing analogies to earlier de Sitter gauge models, we point out the possibility of deriving the Einstein-Cartan Lagrangian {\it without} cosmological term from a {\it modified} quadratic curvature invariant of {\it topological} type.
Recently Pawłowski and Rcaczka proposed a unified model for the fundamental interactions which does not contain a physical Higgs field. The gravitational field equation of their model is rederived under heavy use of the computer algebra system Mathematica and its package MathTensor.
In Minkowski spacetime it is well-known that the canonical energy-momentum current is involved in the construction of the globally conserved currents of energy-momentum and total angular momentum. For the construction of conserved currents corresponding to (approximate) scale and proper conformal symmetries, however, an improved energy-momentum current is needed. By extending the Minkowskian framework to a genuine metric-affine spacetime, we find that the affine Noether identities and the conformal Killing equations enforce this improvement in a rather natural way. So far, no gravitational dynamics is involved in our construction. The resulting dilation and proper conformal currents are conserved provided the trace of the energy-momentum current satisfies a (mild) scaling relation or even vanishes.