Polarizable-Vacuum Approach to General Relativity

Abstract

Topics in general relativity (GR) are routinely treated in terms of tensor formulations in curved spacetime. An alternative approach is presented here, based on treating the vacuum as a polarizable medium. Beyond simply reproducing the standard weak-field predictions of GR, the polarizable vacuum (PV) approach provides additional insight into what is meant by a curved metric. For the strong field case, a divergence of predictions in the two formalisms (GR vs. PV) provides fertile ground for both laboratory and astrophysical tests. IntroductionThe principles of General Relativity (GR) are generally formulated in terms of tensor formulations in curved spacetime. Such an approach captures in a concise and elegant way the interaction between masses, and their consequent motion. "Matter tells space how to curve, and space tells matter how to move [1]." During the course of development of GR over the years, however, alternative approaches have emerged that provide convenient methodologies for investigating metric changes in other formalisms, and which yield heuristic insight into what is meant by a curved metric.One approach that has intuitive appeal is the polarizable-vacuum (PV) approach [2-3]. The PV approach treats metric changes in terms of equivalent changes in the permittivity and permeability constants of the vacuum, ε o and µ o , essentially along the lines of the so-called "THεµ" methodology used in comparative studies of gravitational theories [4][5][6].In brief, Maxwell's equations in curved space are treated in the isomorphism of a polarizable medium of variable refractive index in flat space [7]; the bending of a light ray near a massive body is modeled as due to an induced spatial variation in the refractive index of the vacuum near the body; the reduction in the velocity of light in a gravitational potential is represented by an effective increase in the refractive index of the vacuum, and so forth. As elaborated in Refs. [3][4][5][6][7], PV modeling can be carried out in a self-consistent way so as to reproduce to appropriate order both the equations of GR, and the match to the classical experimental tests of those equations. Under conditions of extreme metric perturbation, however, the PV approach predicts certain results at variance with the

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