The Mathematical Foundations of General Relativity Revisited

The purpose of this paper is to present for the first time an elementary summary of a few recent results obtained through the application of the formal theory of partial differential equations and Lie pseudogroups in order to revisit the mathematical foundations of general relativity. Other engineering examples (control theory, elasticity theory, electromagnetism) will also be considered in order to illustrate the three fundamental results that we shall provide successively. 1) VESSIOT VERSUS CARTAN: The quadratic terms appearing in the “Riemann tensor” according to the “Vessiot structure equations” must not be identified with the quadratic terms appearing in the well known “Cartan structure equations” for Lie groups. In particular, “curvature + torsion” (Cartan) must not be considered as a generalization of “curvature alone” (Vessiot). 2) JANET VERSUS SPENCER: The “Ricci tensor” only depends on the nonlinear transformations (called “elations” by Cartan in 1922) that describe the “difference” existing between the Weyl group (10 parameters of the Poincaré subgroup + 1 dilatation) and the conformal group of space-time (15 parameters). It can be defined without using the indices leading to the standard contraction or trace of the Riemann tensor. Meanwhile, we shall obtain the number of components of the Riemann and Weyl tensors without any combinatoric argument on the exchange of indices. Accordingly and contrary to the “Janet sequence”, the “Spencer sequence” for the conformal Killing system and its formal adjoint fully describe the Cosserat equations, Maxwell equations and Weyl equations but General Relativity is not coherent with this result. 3) ALGEBRA VERSUS GEOMETRY: Using the powerful methods of “Algebraic Analysis”, that is a mixture of homological agebra and differential geometry, we shall prove that, contrary to other equations of physics (Cauchy equations, Cosserat equations, Maxwell equations), the Einstein equations cannot be “parametrized”, that is the generic solution cannot be expressed by means of the derivatives of a certain number of arbitrary potential-like functions, solving therefore negatively a 1000 $ challenge proposed by J. Wheeler in 1970. Accordingly, the mathematical foundations of electromagnetism and gravitation must be revisited within this formal framework, though striking it may look like. We insist on the fact that the arguments presented are of a purely mathematical nature and are thus unavoidable.

Why Gravitational Waves Cannot Exist

The purpose of this short but difficult paper is to revisit the mathematical foundations of both General Relativity (GR) and Gauge Theory (GT) in the light of a modern approach to nonlinear systems of ordinary or partial differential equations, using new methods from Differential Geometry (D.C. Spencer, 1970), Differential Algebra (J.F. Ritt, 1950 and E. Kolchin, 1973) and Algebraic Analysis (M. Kashiwara, 1970). The main idea is to identify the differential indeterminates of Ritt and Kolchin with the jet coordinates of Spencer, in order to study Differential Duality by using only linear differential operators with coefficients in a differential field K. In particular, the linearized second order Einstein operator and the formal adjoint of the Ricci operator are both parametrizing the 4 first order Cauchy stress equations but cannot themselves be parametrized. In the framework of Homological Algebra, this result is not coherent with the vanishing of a certain second extension module and leads to question the proper origin and existence of gravitational waves. As a byproduct, we also prove that gravitation and electromagnetism only depend on the second order jets (called elations by E. Cartan in 1922) of the system of conformal Killing equations because any 1-form with value in the bundle of elations can be decomposed uniquely into the direct sum (R, F) where R is a section of the Ricci bundle of symmetric covariant 2-tensors and the EM field F is a section of the vector bundle of skew-symmetric 2-tensors. No one of these purely mathematical results could have been obtained by any classical approach. Up to the knowledge of the author, it is also the first time that differential algebra in a modern setting is applied to study the specific algebraic feature of most equations to be found in mathematical physics, particularly in GR.

Affine Structures on a Ringed Space and Schemes

The author first introduces the notion of affine structures on a ringed space and then obtains several related properties.Affine structures on a ringed space,arising from complex analytical spaces of algebraic schemes,behave like differential structures on a smooth manifold.As one does for differential manifolds,pseudogroups of affine transformations are used to define affine atlases on a ringed space.An atlas on a space is said to be an affine structure if it is maximal.An affine structure is said to be admissible if there is a sheaf on the underlying space such that they are coincide on all affine charts,which are in deed affine open sets of a scheme.In a rigour manner,a scheme is defined to be a ringed space with a specified affine structure if the affine structures make a contribution to the cases such as analytical spaces of algebraic schemes.Particularly,by the whole of affine structures on a space,two necessary and sufficient conditions,that two spaces are homeomorphic and that two schemes are isomorphic,coming from the main theorems of the paper,are obtained respectively.A conclusion is drawn that the whole of affine structures on a space and a scheme,as local data,encode and reflect the global properties of the space and the scheme,respectively.