Nature of the Gravitational Field and its Legitimate Energy-Momentum Tensor

Abstract

In this paper we show how a gravitational field generated by a given energy-momentum distribution (for all realistic cases) can be represented by distinct geometrical structures (Lorentzian, teleparallel and non null nonmetricity spacetimes) or that we even can dispense all those geometrical structures and simply represent the gravitational field as a field, in the Faraday's sense, living in Minkowski spacetime. The explicit Lagrangian density for this theory is given and the field equations (which are a set of four Maxwell's like equations) are shown to be equivalent to Einstein's equations. We also analyze if the teleparallel formulation can give a mathematical meaning to "Einstein's most happy thought", i.e. the equivalence principle. Moreover we discuss the Hamiltonian formalism for for our theory and its relation to one of the possibles concepts for energy of the gravitational field which emerges from it and the concept of ADM energy. One of the main results of the paper is the identification in our theory of a legitimate energy-mometum tensor for the gravitational field expressible through a really nice formula.Comment: paper presented at the IX International Conference on Clifford Algebras and their Applications in Mathematical Physics (ICC9), Weimar, July 15-20, 2011. This version corrects some misprints of the version appearing in Rep. Math. Phys. 69, 265-279 (2012