Bondi-Sachs Formalism
Abstract
The Bondi-Sachs formalism of General Relativity is a metric-based treatment of the Einstein equations in which the coordinates are adapted to the null geodesics of the spacetime. It provided the first convincing evidence that that mass loss due to gravitational radiation is a nonlinear effect of general relativity and that the emission of gravitational waves from an isolated system is accompanied by a mass loss from the system. The asymptotic behaviour of the Bondi-Sachs metric revealed the existence of the symmetry group at null infinity, the Bondi-Metzner-Sachs group, which turned out to be larger than the Poincare group.
- Publication:
-
Scholarpedia
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- DOI:
- 10.4249/scholarpedia.33528
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1609.01731
- Bibcode:
- 2016SchpJ..1133528M
- Keywords:
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- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics;
- High Energy Physics - Theory
- E-Print:
- Scholarpedia review article, an up-to-date version can be found under http://scholarpedia.org/article/Bondi-Sachs_Formalism, includes general normalisation of unit sphere dyad, corrected typos, additional references