General Relativity – How is General Relativity Reduced to Special Relativity in Limiting Cases?

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I understand that general relativity is applicable to gravitational fields and special relativity is applicable to case when there is no gravity. But is there a derivation on how to reduce General Relativity to Special Relativity in limiting case, much like how General Relativity is reduced to Newtonian gravity in weak-gravity case?

Edit: By reducing I mean, how can we derive the Lorentz transformation from General Relativity under appropriate limits?

Best Answer

When you say "how can we derive the Lorentz transformation from General Relativity" this is really asking "how is the Minkowski metric a solution of the vacuum Einstein equation", because Special Relativity is just the geometry defined by the Minkowski metric.

If you take the Einstein equation and turn off gravity by setting $ G = 0 $, you get the vacuum Einstein equation $ G_{a b} = 0 $. The Minkowski metric is a solution of this equation, but of course there are lots of others. From your question I'd guess you're hoping that the Einstein equation will simplify in the absence of gravity, and this will make it obvious how Special Relativity emerges. Sadly this isn't the case, because even in the absence of mass, or $ G $ set to zero, gravity waves are still allowed.

I don't think there is any way to simplify the Einstein equation to make the Minkowski metric the only solution. You can require that the first derivatives of the metric vanish, but this is really getting the flat space solution by requiring that space not be curved, which is a bit of a tautology. The problem is that SR the Minkowski metric is an assumption i.e. it's where you start from. In GR the Minkowski metric is just one among many solutions so there's nothing fundamental about it.

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_tensor if you want to play around with the Einstein tensor to try and extract the Minkowksi metric.