Physical Review Letters

“Impediment to Torsion from Spectral Geometry”

The incorporation of torsion, a kind of twist in space-time, to Einstein's theory of gravity has long been a subject of scientific inquiry in physics. Torsion would correspond to additional twisting of a rubber sheet, which is bent by gravity when a heavy object is placed on it.  It has been unclear for decades whether this effect is a mathematical abstraction or a real physical phenomenon.  We revisited this problem in our study by using mathematical methods from the field of spectral geometry. We discovered that the mathematical framework thought to provide a smooth and consistent description of gravity starts to falter when torsion is included.  This implies that there might not be such bending in space-time.

Access to paper: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/drdl-l2mp