0

In my understanding, not only mass but any kind of energy/ force bends spacetime. So is it correct to say that every object in the world moves along geodesic? If the object is submit to a force, it will not feel an acceleration: the force will bend the underlying spacetime --> the geodesic of the object will change --> its worldline in spacetime will change, but only because the curvature of spacetime has changed. It will still move along a geodesic. So acceleration, in some sense, simply doesn't exist anymore.

Is this interpretation correct?

Qmechanic
  • 220,844

1 Answers1

4

Not every force is manifested through the curvature of spacetime, only gravity. Take the electromagnetic field, for example. It has energy-momentum density, so it affects the gravitational field and hence the movement of particles. But this is not the only effect it has: on a charged particle, it also acts directly through the electromagnetic force.

Mathematically, for a particle of mass $m$ and charge $q$ in an EM field $F_{\mu\nu}$, the geodesic equation is modified to

$$\frac{d u^\mu}{d\tau} + \Gamma^\mu{}_{\nu\lambda} u^\nu u^\lambda = \frac{q}{m} F^\mu{}_\nu u^\nu.$$

If there was no electromagnetic field, the right hand side would be zero, and you would just have the geodesic equation with the gravitational field $\Gamma^\mu{}_{\nu\lambda}$. If there is an EM field, then two things happen. For one, its energy-momentum influences the gravitational field, so that $\Gamma^\mu{}_{\nu\lambda}$ changes. But it also directly applies a force on the particle, given by the right hand side of the equation, and this effect is usually much bigger. The particle doesn't follow a geodesic anymore.

Javier
  • 28,811