General Relativity – What is the Lagrangian of Einstein Field Equations?

general-relativitylagrangian-formalism

What is a lagrangian such that Euler-Lagrange equation (not sure if it's correct form for this case)

$$\frac{\partial \mathcal{L}}{\partial g_{\mu\nu}}=\partial_\lambda\frac{\partial \mathcal{L}}{\partial (\partial_\lambda g_{\mu\nu})}.$$

Gives us Einstein field equations?

Best Answer

This is almost certainly answered elsewhere, but the Hilbert Action, from which Einstein's equation can be derived, is:

$$S = \int d^{4}x\;\left(\sqrt{|g|}\frac{1}{16\pi G}R + \mathcal{L}_{m}\right)$$

taking the variation is pretty complicated (there are second derivatives of the metric in the action, and you have to deal with gauge invariance) and best looked up in a textbook, though. But note, that by this definition, we define $T_{ab} = \frac{\delta \mathcal{L_m}}{\delta g^{ab}}$

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