From Kerr to Heisenberg

In this paper, we consider the space-time of a charged mass endowed with an angular momentum. The geometry is described by the exact Kerr–Newman solution of the Einstein equations. The peculiar symmetry, though exact, is usually described in terms of the gravito-magnetic field originated by the angular momentum of the source. A typical product of this geometry is represented by the generalized Sagnac effect. We write down the explicit form for the right/left asymmetry of the times of flight of two counter-rotating light beams along a circular trajectory. Letting the circle shrink to the origin the asymmetry stays finite. Furthermore it becomes independent both from the charge of the source (then its electromagnetic field) and from Newton’s constant: it is then associated only to the symmetry produced by the gravitomagnetic field. When introducing, for the source, the spin of a Fermion, the lowest limit of the Heisenberg uncertainty formula for energy and time appears.

Galactic rotation curve and dark matter according to gravitomagnetism

Historically, the existence of dark matter has been postulated to resolve discrepancies between astrophysical observations and accepted theories of gravity. In particular, the measured rotation curve of galaxies provided much experimental support to the dark matter concept. However, most theories used to explain the rotation curve have been restricted to the Newtonian potential framework, disregarding the general relativistic corrections associated with mass currents. In this paper it is shown that the gravitomagnetic field produced by the currents modifies the galactic rotation curve, notably at large distances. The coupling between the Newtonian potential and the gravitomagnetic flux function results in a nonlinear differential equation that relates the rotation velocity to the mass density. The solution of this equation reproduces the galactic rotation curve without recourse to obscure dark matter components, as exemplified by three characteristic cases. A bi-dimensional model is developed that allows to estimate the total mass, the central mass density, and the overall shape of the galaxies, while fitting the measured luminosity and rotation curves. The effects attributed to dark matter can be simply explained by the gravitomagnetic field produced by the mass currents.

Angle deficit and nonlocal gravitoelectromagnetism around a slowly spinning cosmic string

Cosmic strings, as remnants of the symmetry breaking phase in the Early universe, may be susceptible to nonlocal physics. Here, we show that the presence of a Poincaré-invariant nonlocality—parametrized by a factor [Formula: see text]—regularizes the gravitational field and thereby changes the properties of spacetime: it is now simply connected and the angle deficit around the cosmic string becomes a function of the radial distance. Similar changes occur for the nonlocal gravitomagnetic field of a rotating cosmic string, and we translate these mathematical facts into the language of nonlocal gravitoelectromagnetism and thereby provide a physical interpretation. We hope that these insights might provide a helpful perspective in the search for traces of nonlocal physics in our universe.

A 1% Measurement of the Gravitomagnetic Field of the Earth with Laser-Tracked Satellites

A new measurement of the gravitomagnetic field of the Earth is presented. The measurement has been obtained through the careful evaluation of the Lense-Thirring (LT) precession on the combined orbits of three passive geodetic satellites, LAGEOS, LAGEOS II, and LARES, tracked by the Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) technique. This general relativity precession, also known as frame-dragging, is a manifestation of spacetime curvature generated by mass-currents, a peculiarity of Einstein’s theory of gravitation. The measurement stands out, compared to previous measurements in the same context, for its precision (≃7.4×10−3, at a 95% confidence level) and accuracy (≃16×10−3), i.e., for a reliable and robust evaluation of the systematic sources of error due to both gravitational and non-gravitational perturbations. To achieve this measurement, we have largely exploited the results of the GRACE (Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment) mission in order to significantly improve the description of the Earth’s gravitational field, also modeling its dependence on time. In this way, we strongly reduced the systematic errors due to the uncertainty in the knowledge of the Earth even zonal harmonics and, at the same time, avoided a possible bias of the final result and, consequently, of the precision of the measurement, linked to a non-reliable handling of the unmodeled and mismodeled periodic effects.

Gravitational fields of the magnetic-type

Local conformal symmetry introduces the conformal curvature (Weyl tensor) that gets split into its (gravito-) electric and magnetic (tensor) parts. Newtonian tidal forces are expected from the gravitoelectric field, whereas general-relativistic frame-dragging effects emerge from the gravitomagnetic field. The symmetric, traceless gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic tensor fields can be visualized by their eigenvectors and eigenvalues. In this paper, we depict the gravitoelectric and gravitomagnetic fields around a slowly rotating black hole. This suggests that the phenomenon of ultra-fast outflows observed at the centers of active galaxies may give evidence for the gravitomagnetic fields of spinning supermassive black holes. We also question whether the current issues in our contemporary observations might be resolved by the inclusion of gravitomagnetism on large scales in a perturbed FLRW model.

Gravitomagnetism in modified theory of gravity

We study the gravitomagnetism in the Scalar-Vector-Tensor theory or Moffat’s Modified theory of Gravity (MOG). We compute the gravitomagnetic field that a slow-moving mass distribution produces in its Newtonian regime. We report that the consistency between the MOG gravitomagnetic field and that predicted by the Einstein’s gravitational theory and measured by Gravity Probe B, LAGEOS and LAGEOS 2, and with a number of GRACE and Laser Lunar ranging measurements requires [Formula: see text].

Nonlocal Gravitomagnetism

We briefly review the current status of nonlocal gravity (NLG), which is a classical nonlocalgeneralization of Einstein’s theory of gravitation based on a certain analogy with the nonlocalelectrodynamics of media. Nonlocal gravity thus involves integro-differential field equationsand a causal constitutive kernel that should ultimately be determined from observational data.We consider the stationary gravitational field of an isolated rotating astronomical source in the linearapproximation of nonlocal gravity. In this weak-field and slow-motion approximation of NLG,we describe the gravitomagnetic field associated with the rotating source and compare our resultswith gravitoelectromagnetism (GEM) of the standard general relativity theory. Moreover, we brieflystudy the energy-momentum content of the GEM field in nonlocal gravity.