Restrictions on possible forms of classical matter fields carrying no energy

Abstract

It is postulated in general relativity that the matter energy-momentum tensor (named the stress tensor) vanishes if and only if all the matter fields vanish. In classical lagrangian field theory the stres tensor is the variational (symmetric) one and a priori it might occur that for some systems the tensor is identically zero for all field configurations whereas evolution of the system is subject to deterministic equations of motion. Such a system would not generate its own gravitational field. To check if suchsystems may exist we find a relationship between the stress tensor and the Euler operator. We prove that if a system of n interacting scalar fields (n cannot exceed the spacetime dimension d) or a single vector field (if d is even) has the stress tensor such that its divergence is identically zero ("on and off shell"), then the Lagrange equations of motion hold identically too. These systems are unphysical as having no propagation equations at all. Thus nontrivial field equations imply the nontrivial stress tensor. The theorem breaks down if the of the field components n is greater than d. We show that for n>d matter systems without energy and their own gravity (and yet detectable) are in principle admissible. Their equations of motion are degenerate. We also show for which matter systems their stress tensors cannot vanish for all solutions of the field equations.