Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-general-relativity-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/3/a/solution

The intended orbit is a freely falling timelike circular Schwarzschild geodesic. Use the Schwarzschild metric with rather than as the zeroth coordinate, and put the orbit at . Thus , , , with . The radial geodesic equation at constant is
Consequently . The four-velocity normalization gives
and hence
Here is Schwarzschild time, the orbiting clock's proper time, the gravitational constant, the central mass, the constant areal radius, and the speed of light. The dimensionless follows the question's time-valued zeroth-coordinate convention; with the zeroth four-velocity component would be .
The condition is for a massive circular geodesic; radial stability further requires , with equality marginal. The phrase “any circular orbit” is false without free fall: a powered circular trajectory has with independently chosen . For example, at choose ; this valid accelerated circular trajectory has , instead of the displayed .

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