Gravitational Field of Massive Point Particle in General Relativity

Abstract

Utilizing various gauges of the radial coordinate we give a description of static spherically symmetric space-times with point singularity at the center and vacuum outside the singularity. We show that in general relativity (GR) there exist a two-parameters family of such solutions to the Einstein equations which are physically distinguishable but only some of them describe the gravitational field of a single massive point particle with nonzero bare mass $M_0$. In particular, we show that the widespread Hilbert's form of Schwarzschild solution, which depends only on the Keplerian mass $M<M_0$, does not solve the Einstein equations with a massive point particle's stress-energy tensor as a source. Novel normal coordinates for the field and a new physical class of gauges are proposed, in this way achieving a correct description of a point mass source in GR. We also introduce a gravitational mass defect of a point particle and determine the dependence of the solutions on this mass defect. The result can be described as a change of the Newton potential $ϕ_{{}_N}=-G_{{}_N}M/r$ to a modified one: $ϕ_{{}_G}=-G_{{}_N}M/ (r+G_{{}_N} M/c^2\ln{{M_0}\over M})$ and a corresponding modification of the four-interval. In addition we give invariant characteristics of the physically and geometrically different classes of spherically symmetric static space-times created by one point mass. These space-times are analytic manifolds with a definite singularity at the place of the matter particle.