Can general relativity be completely described as a

field in a flat space?

Gordon Liu
Copernicus Institute for Physics and Astronomy
gordonliu168@gmail.com

For above question, my answer is yes! Actually, for this question, a number of
authors, including Rosen, Kraichnan, Gupta, Weinberg, Feynman, Deser,
Grishchuk, T. M. Nieuwenhuizen, and Logunov, etc., have discussed the utility of
introducing the metric of flat background space-time into GR. Those theories
called the bi-metric gravitation or the field-theoretical approach to General
Relativity.
Generally speaking, they can be divided into four schools. I call them Rosen school,
Weinberg school, Deser school and Logunov school. Rosen school uses the flat
background space-time as a useful mathematical tool. Strictly speaking, the
discription of Rosen school has mathematical problem, they use the same vector
dxi to construct the metric of flat background space-time ds 2 ij dxi dx j and the
metric of Riemannian space-time ds 2 gij dxi dx j . If the xi is the coordinates of a flat
space-time, it is impossible at same time to be the coordinates of the Riemannian
space-time. If we think that the g ij is the metric tensor with respect to the
coordinates xi , here xi are not the coordinates of flat space-time anymore and its
meaning has been totally changed. Weinberg school uses the flat background
space-time in weak field of gravity for approximation calculus. That is ok, no
mathematical problem. That is why now the mainstream thinks that considering
gravitational problem in flat space-time is just for approximate calculus. Logunov
school thinks that there is a effective Riemannian space-time in a real visible flat
background space-time, they call their theory as Relativistic Theory of Gravitation.
Their theory has same mathematical problem like Rosen school's and the picture of
the effective Riemannian space-time and the real visible flat background spacetime is not clear. Deser school has tried different analogs and guesses their
Lagrangian densities according to the Einstein equations in order to corresponding

with Einstein equations. I think these are very good works. Unfortunately, Deser
school has not got rid of fetter of geometrization. They deduce Einstein equations
from field concept in flat space-time and go back to GR. Deser said:"It is at this
point that the geometrical interpretation of general relativity arises, since all matter
now moves in an effective Riemann space of metric ..., and so the initial flat
background space ... is no longer observable". "It goes without saying that this
non-geometrical interpretation of GR, far from replacing Einsteins original
geometrical vision, is a tribute to its scope". Here still has a similar mathematical
problem like Rosen and Logunov schools. The gravitational field in flat space-time
cannot be automatically converged to a Riemannian space-time through infinite
series superposition. The coordinates xi in flat space-time cannot be changed to the
coordinates of Riemannian space-time through infinite series superposition. There
is no such mapping between a flat space-time and a Riemannian space-time. If no
such mapping, what are the foundation and the geometrical significance that they
guess and deduce Einstein equations? The reason they get these wrong ideas is that
they do not know the relationship between Riemann geometry and the gravitational
field in flat space-time.
In my paper, the relationships of the Riemannian space-time, the de Donder
conditions and the gravitational field in flat space-time has been discovered and
elaborated. The main idea is: Let the coordinate system xi of flat space-time to
absorb a second rank tensor field ij of the flat space-time deforming into a

Riemannian space-time, namely, the tensor field is regarded as a metric tensor

with respect to the coordinate system x . After done this, x is not the coordinate
system of flat space-time anymore, but is the coordinate system of the new
Riemannian space-time. The inverse operation also can be done. According to
these notions, we propose the concepts of the absorption operation and the
desorption operation. Further, we find a way to hold the structural form of Einstein
equations, abandon the purely geometrical interpretation of gravitation and make
the equations global Lorentz invariance. Now Einstein equations have no any
geometrical significance, and de Donder conditions have obvious physical
meaning. Einstein equations and de Donder conditions together compose the
equations of gravitational field in Minkowsky space-time. The gravitational redshift of light is due to the photon obeying the conservation law of energy and the
potential and kinetic energy transforming between each other when it is moving in

a gravitational field. Gravitation can affect the motion of matter and change the
energy-momentum of matter, thereby affect the period of matters motion, but
these changes can be aware of by comparing with the background space-time. Just
like usual, it is being routinely used in relativistic astrometry and relativistic
celestial mechanics. People can store and analyze the data in terms of the flat
space-time quantities after subtraction of the theoretically calculated gravitational
corrections, rather than in terms of directly measured quantities.
Reference
N. Rosen, General Relativity and Flat Space I, Physical Review, Vol. 57, No. 2,
1940. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.57147
S. Weinberg, Derivation of Gauge Invariance and the Equivalence Principle from
Lorentz Invariance of the S-Matrix, Physics Letters, Vol. 9, No. 4, 1964.
doi:10.1016/0031-9163(64)90396-8
S. Deser, Self-Interaction and Gauge Invariance, Gene- ral Relativity and
Gravitation, Vol. 1, No.18. doi:10.1007/BF00759198
S. V. Babak and L. P. Grishchuk, Energy-Momentum Tensor for the Gravitational
Field, Physical Review D, Vol. 61, No. 2, 1999, Article ID: 024038.
doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.61.024038
A. A. Logunov, The Relativistic Theory of Gravitation, Nauka, Moscow, 2000.
G. Liu, "Riemannian Space-Time, de Donder Conditions and Gravitational Field in
Flat Space-Time," International Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 3 No.
1, 2013, pp. 8-19. doi: 10.4236/ijaa.2013.31002.