Tilted shear-free axially symmetric fluids

TL;DR

This paper investigates how different observers perceive gravitational radiation in axially symmetric, shear-free fluids, revealing that tilted observers detect radiation absent in comoving frames, emphasizing the observer's role in physical interpretation.

Contribution

It demonstrates that tilted observers detect gravitational radiation in shear-free fluids where comoving observers see none, highlighting the importance of observer perspective in gravitational physics.

Findings

Comoving observers see no gravitational radiation.

Tilted observers detect non-zero magnetic Weyl tensor.

Observer choice affects interpretation of gravitational phenomena.

Abstract

We carry on a systematic study of the physical properties of axially symmetric fluid distributions, which appear to be geodesic, shear--free, irrotational, non--dissipative and purely electric, for the comoving congruence of observers, from the point of view of the tilted congruence. The vanishing of the magnetic part of the Weyl tensor for the comoving congruence of observers, suggests that no gravitational radiation is produced during the evolution of the system. Instead, the magnetic part of the Weyl tensor as measured by tilted observers is non vanishing (as well as the shear, the four--acceleration, the vorticity and the dissipation), giving rise to a flux of gravitational radiation that can be characterized through the super--Poynting vector. This result strengthens further the relevance of the role of observers in the description of a physical system. An explanation of this dual interpretation in terms of the information theory, is provided.