The relativistic glider revisited

TL;DR

This paper revisits the relativistic glider concept, providing detailed analysis, explicit expansions, and long-term behavior, confirming its ability to glide without stopping or reversing fall under weak gravity and low velocity conditions.

Contribution

It offers a detailed analytical and numerical study of the relativistic glider, including explicit expansions and long-term behavior analysis, clarifying its capabilities and limitations.

Findings

The system can function as a glider under certain conditions.

It cannot stop or reverse the fall of an object.

Long-term behavior confirms limited gliding ability.

Abstract

In this paper we analyze some aspects of the "relativistic glider" proposed by Gu\'eron and Mosna more in detail. In particular an explicit weak gravity and low velocity expansion is presented, the influence of different initial conditions are studied and the behavior of the glider over a longer integration time is presented. Our results confirm that the system can be used as a glider, but is not able to stop or even revert the fall of an object.