49 pages, 5 figures, talk given at the Poincaré Seminar ``Gravitation et Expérience'' (28 October 2006, Paris); to appear in the proceedings to be published by Birkhäuser
After recalling the conceptual foundations and the basic structure of general relativity, we review some of its main modern developments (apart from cosmology) : (i) the post-Newtonian limit and weak-field tests in the solar system, (ii) strong gravitational fields and black holes, (iii) strong-field and radiative tests in binary pulsar observations, (iv) gravitational waves, (v) general relativity and quantum theory.
The next generation of gravitational-wave detectors, conceived to begin operations in the 2030s, will probe fundamental physics with exquisite sensitivity. These observations will measure the equation of state of dense nuclear matter in the most extreme environments in the universe, reveal with exquisite fidelity the nonlinear dynamics of warped spacetime, put general relativity to the strictest test, and perhaps use black holes as cosmic particle detectors. Achieving each of these goals will require a new generation of numerical relativity simulations that will run at scale on the supercomput…
Frank Wilczek's essay "Total Relativity: Mach 2004" (PHYSICS TODAY April, 2004, p. 10) cogently updates the status of the intuitively compelling, but partly unrealized, theory of Mach's Principle. I think, however, that an important consequence of the Principle has been skipped: that is, the possibility of linear deformations of the internal structure of elementary particles from the Minkowski structure imposed by the local gravitational (metric) field. [Note: This Comment is similar to one submitted to, but not published by, PHYSICS TODAY as a Letter to the Editor.]
Even if Einstein's General Relativity achieved a great success and overcame lots of experimental tests, it also showed some shortcomings and flaws which today advise theorists to ask if it is the definitive theory of gravity. In this essay we show that, if advanced projects on the detection of Gravitational Waves (GWs) will improve their sensitivity, allowing to perform a GWs astronomy, accurate angular and frequency dependent response functions of interferometers for GWs arising from various Theories of Gravity, i.e. General Relativity and Extended Theories of Gravity, will be the definitive …
Even if Einstein's General Relativity achieved a great success and overcame lots of experimental tests, it also showed some shortcomings and flaws which today advise theorists to ask if it is the definitive theory of gravity. In this proceeding paper it is shown that, if advanced projects on the detection of Gravitational Waves (GWs) will improve their sensitivity, allowing to perform a GWs astronomy, accurate angular and frequency dependent response functions of interferometers for GWs arising from various Theories of Gravity, i.e. General Relativity and Extended Theories of Gravity, will be …
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes involving spacecraft navigation, geodesy and time transfer. Here I review the foundations of general relativity, discuss recent progress in the tests of relativistic gravity, and present motivations for the new generation of high-accuracy tests of new physics beyond general relativity. Space-based experiments in fundamental physics are capable today to uniquely …
After recalling the differential geometry of non-metric connections in the formalism of differential forms, we introduce the idea of a Non-Metricity (NM) connection, whose connection $1$--forms coincides with the non-metricity $1$--forms for a class of cobase fields. Then we formulate a theory of gravitation (equivalent to General Relativity (GR)) which admits a geometrical interpretation in a flat torsionless space where the gravitational field is completely manifest in the non-metricity of a NM connection. We define and then apply the non-metricity gauge to a gravitational Lagrangian density…
Long before the general theory of relativity was finally formulated in 1916, arguments based entirely on Einstein's equivalence principle predicted the well known phenomenon of the gravitational red shift. Precisely the same arguments are widely being used today to derive the same phenomenon. Accordingly, it is often claimed that the observed gravitational red shift is a verification of the equivalence principle rather than a verification of the full theory of general relativity. Here we show that, contrary to these claims, the arguments based on the equivalence principle are false and that \i…
General Relativity (GR) revolutionized the way we thought about gravity. After briefly describing the key successes of GR and its impact, I will discuss the major conceptual challenges it faces today. I conclude by outlining the prospective future directions of development, which hold the promise of deepening our understanding of the nature of gravity.
It is well known that Einstein's General Relativity (GR) achieved a great success and overcame lots of experimental tests. On the other hand, GR also showed some shortcomings and flaws which today advise theorists to ask if it is the definitive theory of gravity. In this review we show that, if advanced projects on the detection of Gravitational Waves (GWs) will improve their sensitivity, allowing to perform a GWs astronomy, understanding if Einstein's GR is the correct and definitive theory of gravity will be possible. For this goal, accurate angular and frequency dependent response functions…
We investigate the gravitational radiation emitted by an isolated system for gravity theories with Lagrange density $f(R) = R + aR^2$. As a formal result we obtain leading order corrections to the quadrupole formula in General Relativity. We make use of the analogy of $f(R)$ theories with scalar--tensor theories, which in contrast to General Relativity feature an additional scalar degree of freedom. Unlike General Relativity, where the leading order gravitational radiation is produced by quadrupole moments, the additional degree of freedom predicts gravitational radiation of all multipoles, in…
The recent observation of gravitational waves confirms one of the most interesting predictions in general relativity: the black holes. Because the gravitational waves detected by LIGO fit very well within general relativity as a phenomenon produced by two colliding black holes. Then the reality of black holes seems almost undoubted today. However, a stronger proof on the reality of black holes would be indicated by the observation of the event horizon, which is what defines it. In this article, it is indicated that only the event horizon defines a black hole. There is no mention to the singula…
Even if Einstein's General Relativity achieved a great success and overcame lots of experimental tests, it also showed some shortcomings and flaws which today advise theorists to ask if it is the definitive theory of gravity. In this letter Proceeding we show that, by assuming that advanced projects on the detection of Gravitational Waves (GWs) will improve their sensitivity, allowing to perform a GWs astronomy, accurate angular and frequency dependent response functions of interferometers for GWs arising from various Theories of Gravity, i.e. General Relativity and Extended Theories of Gravit…
During the past century Einstein's theory of General Relativity gave rise to an experimental triumph, however, there are still aspects of this theory to be measured or more accurately tested. One of the main challenges in experimental gravitation, together with the direct detection of gravitational waves, is today the accurate measurement of the gravitomagnetic field generated by the angular momentum of a body. Here, after a description of frame-dragging and gravitomagnetism and of the main experiments to detect these relativistic phenomena, we show that the fundamental tests of General Relati…
The Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity (LATOR) is a Michelson-Morley-type experiment designed to achieve a major improvement in the accuracy of the tests of relativistic gravity in the solar system. By using a combination of independent time-series of gravitational deflection of light in the immediate proximity to the Sun, along with measurements of the relativistic time delay on interplanetary scales (to a precision respectively better than 0.1 picoradians and 1 cm), LATOR will measure the key post-Newtonian Eddington parameter γwith accuracy of one part in a billion - a factor of 30,000 im…
Originally regarded as forbidden, black hole ``hair'' are fields associated with a stationary black hole apart from the gravitational and electromagnetic ones. Several stable stationary black hole solutions with gauge or Skyrme field hair are known today within general relativity. We formulate here a ``no scalar--hair'' conjecture, and adduce some new theorems that almost establish it by ruling out - for all but a small parameter range - scalar field hair of spherical black holes in general relativity, whether the field be self--interacting, coupled to an Abelian gauge field, or nonminimally c…
This is the first of three papers on Conformal General Relativity (CGR), which differs from Einstein's General Relativity (GR) in that it requires action--integral invariance under local scale transformations in addition to general coordinate transformations. The theory is here introduced in the semiclassical approximation as a preliminary approach to a quantum theoretical implementation. The idea of a conformal--invariant extension of GR was introduced by Weyl in 1919. For several decades it had little impact, as CGR implies that all fields are massless. Today this does not appear to be an un…
This paper discusses the Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity (LATOR) mission. By using a combination of independent time-series of highly accurate gravitational deflection of light in the immediate proximity to the Sun along with measurements of the Shapiro time delay on the interplanetary scales (to a precision respectively better than $10^{-13}$ radians and 1 cm), LATOR will significantly improve our knowledge of relativistic gravity. The primary mission objective is to i) measure the key post-Newtonian Eddington parameter $γ$ with accuracy of a part in 10$^9$. $(1-γ)$ is a direct measure f…
Scalar fields with inverse power-law effective potentials may provide a negative pressure component to the energy density of the universe today, as required by cosmological observations. In order to be cosmologically relevant today, the scalar field should have a mass $m_ϕ= O(10^{-33} {\mathrm eV})$, thus potentially inducing sizable violations of the equivalence principle and space-time variations of the coupling constants. Scalar-tensor theories of gravity provide a framework for accommodating phenomenologically acceptable ultra-light scalar fields. We discuss non-minimally coupled scalar-te…
The Laser Astrometric Test Of Relativity (LATOR) is a joint European-U.S. Michelson-Morley-type experiment designed to test the pure tensor metric nature of gravitation - a fundamental postulate of Einstein's theory of general relativity. By using a combination of independent time-series of highly accurate gravitational deflection of light in the immediate proximity to the Sun, along with measurements of the Shapiro time delay on interplanetary scales (to a precision respectively better than 0.1 picoradians and 1 cm), LATOR will significantly improve our knowledge of relativistic gravity. The …
In 1955, an international conference took place in Berne at which the state of relativity theory and its possible generalizations were presented and critically discussed. I review the most important contributions to that conference and put them into the perspective of today's knowledge about the nature of space and time.
The next generation of weak lensing surveys will trace the evolution of matter perturbations and gravitational potentials from the matter dominated epoch until today. Along with constraining the dynamics of dark energy, they will probe the relations between matter overdensities, local curvature, and the Newtonian potential. We work with two functions of time and scale to account for any modifications of these relations in the linear regime from those in the LCDM model. We perform a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to find the eigenmodes and eigenvalues of these functions for surveys like DES…
The canonical scalar-tensor theory model which exhibits spontaneous scalarization in the strong-gravity regime of neutron stars has long been known to predict a cosmological evolution for the scalar field which generically results in severe violations of present-day Solar System constraints on deviations from general relativity. We study if this tension can be alleviated by generalizing this model to include a disformal coupling between the scalar field $φ$ and matter, where the Jordan frame metric ${\tilde g}_{μν}$ is related to the Einstein frame one $g_{μν}$ by ${\tilde g}_{μν}=A(φ)^2 (g_{μ…
I consider the isolation of general relativity research from the rest of theoretical physics during the 1930s-1950s, and the subsequent reinvigoration of the field. I suggest that the main reason for the isolation was that relativists of the time did not develop heuristic concepts about the physics of the theory with which they could communicate with other physicists, and that the revival happened when they began to develop such concepts. A powerful heuristic today is the concept of a black hole, which is a robust and stable component of many astronomical systems. During the 1930s relativists …
It is well known that general relativity does not admit gravitational geons that are stationary, asymptotically flat, singularity free and topologically trivial. However, it is likely that general relativity will receive corrections at large curvatures and the modified field equations may admit solutions corresponding to this type of geon. If geons are produced in the early universe and survive until today they could account for some of the dark matter that has been "observed" in galaxies and galactic clusters. In this paper I consider gravitational geons in 1+1 dimensional theories of gravity…
An idealized "test" object in general relativity moves along a geodesic. However, if the object has a finite mass, this will create additional curvature in the spacetime, causing it to deviate from geodesic motion. If the mass is nonetheless sufficiently small, such an effect is usually treated perturbatively and is known as the gravitational self-force due to the object. This issue is still an open problem in gravitational physics today, motivated not only by basic foundational interest, but also by the need for its direct application in gravitational-wave astronomy. In particular, the observ…
Based on the new cosmic CMB temperature data from the Planck satellite, the 9 year polarization data from the WMAP, the BAO distance ratio data from the SDSS and 6dF surveys, we place a new constraint on the Brans-Dicke theory. We adopt a parametrization $ζ=\ln(1+1/ω})$, where the general relativity (GR) limit corresponds to $ζ= 0$. We find no evidence of deviation from general relativity. At 95% probability, $-0.00246 < ζ< 0.00567$, correspondingly, the region $-407.0 < ω<175.87$ is excluded. If we restrict ourselves to the $ζ>0$ (i.e. $ω>0$) case, then the 95% probability interval is $ζ<0.00…
General Relativity is today the best theory of gravity addressing a wide range of phenomena. Our understanding of physical laws, from cosmology to local scales, cannot be properly formulated without taking into account it. It is based on one of the most fundamental principles of Nature, the Equivalence Principle, which represents the core of the Einstein theory of gravity. The confirmation of its validity at different scales and in different contexts represents one of the main challenges of modern physics both from the theoretical and the experimental points of view. A major issue related to t…
This talk reviews the constraints imposed by binary-pulsar data on gravity theories, focusing on ``tensor-scalar'' ones which are the best motivated alternatives to general relativity. We recall that binary-pulsar tests are qualitatively different from solar-system experiments, because of nonperturbative strong-field effects which can occur in compact objects like neutron stars, and because one can observe the effect of gravitational radiation damping. Some theories which are strictly indistinguishable from general relativity in the solar system are ruled out by binary-pulsar observations. Dur…
In extensions of general relativity and in theories aiming at unifying gravity with the forces of the Standard Model, the value of the "fundamental constants" is often determined by the vacuum expectation value of new fields, which may thus change in different backgrounds. Variations of fundamental constants with respect to the values measured today in laboratories on Earth are expected to be more evident on cosmological timescales and/or in strong gravitational fields. In this paper, I show that the analysis of the K$α$ iron line observed in the X-ray spectrum of black holes can potentially b…
One of the main challenges in physics today is to merge quantum theory and the theory of general relativity into a unified framework. Various approaches towards developing such a theory of quantum gravity are pursued, but the lack of experimental evidence of quantum gravitational effects thus far is a major hindrance. Yet, the quantization of space-time itself can have experimental implications: the existence of a minimal length scale is widely expected to result in a modification of the Heisenberg uncertainty relation. Here we introduce a scheme that allows an experimental test of this conjec…