Equivalence principle

The equivalence principle states that gravity couples universally to energy-momentum and that a freely falling local frame removes uniform gravitational acceleration at a point. Tidal curvature remains measurable over a finite region.

Imagine releasing a ball inside a small falling elevator. Relative to the cabin it initially floats, because cabin and ball share the same free fall. The weak equivalence principle says this trajectory is independent of the test particle's composition for identical initial conditions. The Einstein equivalence principle further identifies local nongravitational experiments with those of special relativity. It is a statement about experiments in a local inertial frame, not just equality of two masses.

The word local is essential. Coordinates can make the metric tensor equal to the Minkowski metric and its first derivatives vanish at one event. They generally cannot erase the Riemann curvature tensor, which involves second derivatives. Two separated balls can therefore approach or recede even inside the falling cabin. A sufficiently extended experiment detects these tidal forces; a long observation can accumulate them even when the cabin is small. The equivalence principle does not identify an entire planetary gravitational field with acceleration in flat spacetime. See Tong's discussion of normal coordinates and local equivalence.

The prescription replaces partial derivatives in flat-spacetime matter equations by the Levi-Civita connection and the Minkowski metric by the curved metric tensor. It implements minimal gravitational coupling and reproduces flat-spacetime physics at a point in a local inertial frame. It is not a unique rule for rearranged higher-derivative equations: commuting partial derivatives before replacement can conceal a Riemann curvature tensor term afterwards. The derivative-order ambiguity in covariant Maxwell potential equations is an explicit example. The equivalence principle removes uniform gravitational acceleration locally but does not erase tidal curvature over a finite experiment.

The Einstein equivalence principle combines the weak equivalence principle with local Lorentz invariance and local position invariance of nongravitational experiments. In a sufficiently small freely falling laboratory, their results agree with special relativity independently of its location and velocity. The strong equivalence principle extends this claim to local gravitational experiments.

Local position invariance requires identical local experiments to have the same outcome independently of where and when they are performed. For nongravitational experiments it is part of the Einstein equivalence principle. Comparisons of clocks through gravitational redshift test this principle once the gravitational potential difference is independently specified; they do not by themselves test the whole strong equivalence principle.

Local Lorentz invariance requires the outcome of a local experiment, expressed in its freely falling apparatus, to be independent of the apparatus's velocity and orientation. In the Einstein equivalence principle it applies to nongravitational experiments; the strong equivalence principle also includes local gravitational experiments. It is distinct from local position invariance.

Freely falling test particles with identical initial position and velocity follow the same trajectory independently of their material composition. The principle neglects appreciable self-gravity and nongravitational forces. The Einstein equivalence principle extends the local statement to nongravitational experiments; the strong equivalence principle also includes gravitational experiments and self-gravitating bodies.

A torsion-balance comparison of the gravitational acceleration of bodies of different composition, testing equality of inertial and passive gravitational mass up to a universal proportionality factor. A universal acceleration law independent of test-body mass and composition agrees with this weak equivalence principle test. It does not by itself establish the strong equivalence principle for self-gravitating bodies.

The strong equivalence principle extends universality of free fall to bodies with appreciable gravitational self-energy and requires local experiments, including gravitational ones, in a freely falling laboratory to be independent of the laboratory's location and velocity. This statement neglects external tidal variation across the laboratory; it does not remove Riemann curvature tensor. In general relativity, universal metric coupling, fixed local gravitational coupling and the absence of extra preferred-frame gravitational fields implement this principle.

A violation of the strong equivalence principle can make the gravitational-to-inertial mass ratio depend on a body's negative gravitational self-energy $E_G$. Bodies with different self-binding fractions would then fall differently in the same external field, even after composition-dependent weak-equivalence effects are removed. For the Earth and Moon this produces a polarization of the lunar orbit toward the Sun, measurable by lunar laser ranging. General relativity predicts ${\eta }_N=0$.

The equivalence principle allows Riemann normal coordinates in which the first derivatives of the metric tensor vanish at a chosen point. A purported local gravitational stress-energy tensor built from those first derivatives would vanish there in that chart and therefore, if tensorial, in all charts. Such an expression cannot encode the gravitational energy assigned by a coordinate-dependent field description. This rules out an ordinary universal local covariant gravitational energy density, not the construction of local curvature tensors or boundary and averaged notions of gravitational energy. The Riemann curvature tensor still describes invariant tidal gravity.