Synchronous coordinates

ID: synchronous-coordinates

In synchronous coordinates, fixed spatial-coordinate worldlines are timelike geodesics, and is their proper time. The metric has unit lapse function and zero shift vector in time units consistent with the displayed factor . Indeed and give . Locally, an irrotational freely falling congruence permits this construction before crossings of the coordinate worldlines. Comoving observers in a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric provide the standard cosmological example.

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