Version 1
: Received: 25 June 2018 / Approved: 26 June 2018 / Online: 26 June 2018 (14:09:56 CEST)
Version 3
: Received: 10 August 2018 / Approved: 10 August 2018 / Online: 10 August 2018 (11:32:07 CEST)
Version 4
: Received: 3 October 2018 / Approved: 3 October 2018 / Online: 3 October 2018 (15:35:51 CEST)
Vishwakarma, R.G. A Scale-Invariant, Machian Theory of Gravitation and Electrodynamics Unified. International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics. 2018.
Vishwakarma, R.G. A Scale-Invariant, Machian Theory of Gravitation and Electrodynamics Unified. International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics. 2018.
Vishwakarma, R.G. A Scale-Invariant, Machian Theory of Gravitation and Electrodynamics Unified. International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics. 2018.
Vishwakarma, R.G. A Scale-Invariant, Machian Theory of Gravitation and Electrodynamics Unified. International Journal of Geometric Methods in Modern Physics. 2018.
Abstract
As gravitation and electromagnetism are closely analogous long-range interactions, and gravitation is formulated in terms of geometry in general relativity (GR), we expect the latter also to appear through the geometry. This unification has however remained an unfulfilled goal. The goal is achieved here in a new theory, which results from the principles of equivalence and Mach supplemented with a novel insight that the field tensors in a geometric theory of gravitation and electromagnetism must be traceless, since these long-range interactions are mediated by virtual exchange of massless particles whose mass is expected to be related to the trace of the field tensors. Hence the Riemann tensor, like the analogous electromagnetic field tensor, must be traceless. Thence emerges a scale- invariant, Machian theory of gravitation and electrodynamics unified, wherein the vanishing of the Ricci tensor appears as a boundary condition. While the field equations of the theory are given by the vanishing divergence of the respective field tensors and their duals, the matter and charge emerge from the spacetime. A quantitative formulation of the emergent fields embodied in ‘energymomentum super tensors’ follows from the respective Bianchi identities for the two fields. The resulting theory is valid at all scales and explains the observations without invoking the non-baryonic dark matter, dark energy or inflation. Moreover, it answers the questions that the GR-based standard paradigm could not address.
Keywords
Gravitation - Fundamental Problems and General Formalism; Electrodynamics; Scale Invariance; Mach Principle; Dark Energy
Subject
Physical Sciences, Astronomy and Astrophysics
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.