General Relativity and Gauge Theory: Beyond the Mirror

Abstract

Lie pseudogroups are groups of transformations solutions of systems of ordinary or partial differential equations. The purpose of this paper is to present an elementary summary of a few recent results obtained through the application of the formal theory of systems of OD or PD equations and Lie pseudogroups to engineering (elasticity, electromagnetism) or mathematical physics (general relativity, gauge theory) and their couplings (piezoelectricity, photoelasticity). The work of Cartan is superseded by the use of the canonical Spencer sequence while the work of Vessiot is superseded by the use of the canonical Janet sequence but the link between these two sequences and thus these two works is still not known today. Using differential duality in the linear framework, the adjoint of the Spencer operator for the group of conformal transformations provides the Cauchy, Cosserat, Clausius, Maxwell and Weyl equations on equal footing. However, such a unifying result also leads to deep contradictions in the case of gravitational waves and black holes. Indeed, the Beltrami operator (1892) which is parametrizing the Cauchy operator of elasticity by means of 6 stress functions is nothing else than the self-adjoint Einstein operator (1915) in dimension 3 for the deformation of the metric which is parametrizing the div operator induced from the Bianchi identities. The same confusion between the Cauchy and div operators is existing on space-time as the Cauchy operator can be parametrized by the adjoint of the Ricci operator. Accordingly, the foundations of engineering and mathematical physics must be revisited within this new framework, though striking it may sometimes look like.