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My doubt comes from lecture 08 on Theoritische Mechanik by Frederic Schuller.

He gives definition of Newtonian Space time as followg:

A Newtonian Spacetime is a quintuple of structures $(M,\mathcal{O},\mathcal{A} , \nabla, t )$ where $(M, \mathcal{O} , \mathcal{A})$ is a 4- dimensional smooth manifold with an atlas and $t: M \to \mathbb{R}$ satisfying the following.

  1. There exists no $p$ such that $(dt)_p = 0$

  2. The connection is Torsion free

  3. $\nabla dt =0$

My doubt is, does this mean there are many Newtonian Spacetime? If so, for a particular NST, how do we construct the $M$ and the topology $\mathcal{O}$ on it?

  • How in turn is a manifold defined as a $3$-tuple $(M,,\mathcal{O},,\mathcal{A})$? – J.G. Oct 24 '22 at 22:16
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    @J.G. If I recall correctly from Schuller's lectures on GR, his convention is that $M$ is the underlying set, $\mathcal{O}$ is the topology, $\mathcal{A}$ is the smooth atlas giving the differential structure. – Níckolas Alves Oct 24 '22 at 22:50
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    That's a mathematical physicist reinventing the wheel as far as I can tell. If you are worried about topology on a flat manifold, then you are stuck in irrelevant minutiae before you are even getting started. You can worry about tangent spaces and duals, if you like, that makes sense even in Newton, but below that... sigh... why???? What is he trying to do here? – FlatterMann Oct 25 '22 at 00:35
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    @FlatterMann I'm not sure if what he does in the Mechanics course is the same he does in the GR course, but in the GR course he is formulating Newtonian gravity in terms of a curved spacetime (with a connection, but without a metric). – Níckolas Alves Oct 25 '22 at 01:20
  • @NíckolasAlves I totally agree that one should start with concepts from differential geometry at the level of Newton. I think that is both fresh and insightful for students. I simply don't quite understand where the topological aspect comes in, that's all. That's all more or less taken care off by the differentiability of the manifold, isn't it? At the same time I might really be missing something. I am not a theorist. – FlatterMann Oct 25 '22 at 03:06
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    @FlatterMann the differential structure already induces a topology (or requires it, if you prefer to think about it in that way), but Schuller likes to write them explicitly to make the hypotheses clearer. – Níckolas Alves Oct 25 '22 at 17:24
  • @NíckolasAlves I see. Topology is not really a hypothesis, though. At most it's a physicist replacing a basic introduction to calculus for mathematicians with a rather unwieldy mashup of physics and math. Now, if we are talking about global topology rather than local, that's also strange. I have seem tomes written by mathematicians about the global topology of manifolds... so that is also not exactly something that one can do with fly-by physics. – FlatterMann Oct 25 '22 at 18:31

1 Answers1

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This answer is based on what I remember from Schuller's General Relativity course, where he also mentions Newtonian spacetime in these terms. I'm not fully sure if it is identical to what he is doing in the Mechanics course (although I'm confident on it) because I don't speak German, so I didn't watch the course.

Yes, there are many Newtonian spacetimes. It should be noted that what he is calling a Newtonian spacetime is not Galilean spacetime, which is the usual spacetime of Newtonian mechanics used to solve, e.g., a harmonic oscillator. Schuller's Newtonian spacetime incorporates Newtonian gravity, so you do have multiple different Newtonian spacetimes. In fact, each solution for the gravitational field leads to a different one. A spherically symmetric Newtonian gravitational field leads to a Newtonian spacetime, while a uniform Newtonian gravitational field leads to another, completely different one.

As for the choice of underlying set $M$ and $\mathcal{O}$, I guess the answer is in your original statement: the spacetime is defined by five properties. These are pretty much up to you and you should choose an option that models correctly what you're expecting. If you're familiar with General Relativity, you'll notice a similar "problem" occurs in there. Suppose you pick a spacetime $(M,\eta)$, where $M$ is some so-far unspecified differentiable manifold and $\eta$ is a flat metric. While a possible option for $M$ is $M = \mathbb{R}^4$ (yielding Minkowski spacetime), $M = \mathbb{T}^4$ (a 4-torus) is also possible. How do you know which one is correct? Depends on what you're doing and the conditions of the physical problem. In General Relativity, it is conjectured that it is impossible to actually probe the topology of spacetime (a result known as topological censorship conjecture).

Questions and points raised in the comments

Doesn't Hamiltonian mechanics already deal with constraints? The manifold meant here is somewhat different. In usual Hamiltonian mechanics, gravity is understood as a force. In here, it is understood as spacetime curvature (although not in a metric sense). We're not imposing different structures on the configuration space, but on spacetime itself.

Shouldn't spacetime be restricted by orbital stability? No. In General Relativity, for example, we use the word "spacetime" to refer to different physical situations, not the actual physical and incredibly complicated spacetime in which we actually live in. Schwarzschild spacetime models a spherically symmetric compact object. FLRW spacetime models an isotropic and homogeneous universe. Minkowski spacetime models the absence of gravity (or a negligible field). Similarly, different Newtonian spacetimes correspond to different physical situations. You'll have a spacetime for an uniform field (if you want an approximation for gravity near the surface of Earth) and you'll have a different spacetime for the detailed field of the Earth, and a different spacetime for the gravitational field of the Sun and all the planets in the solar system.

Why isn't Galilean spacetime equal to Newtonian spacetime? Geometrically, they are very different. When we talk about Galilean spacetime, we consider gravity to be a force. Schuller's notion of a Newtonian spacetime introduces gravity as spacetime curvature, so it is actually quite different from Galilean spacetime. I guess it is fair to say Galilean spacetime is a particular example of a Newtonian spacetime. Namely, it is the Newtonian spacetime that presents no gravitational effects (the connection is trivial).

  • Aren't constraints being taken care off by Hamilton, already? With regards to "which spacetime is correct", the classical answer to that is orbital stability, which seems to restrict Newtonian space to three dimensional if we want it to agree with observation. We can, of course, investigate physics in higher dimensions, but from what I have seen so far, the results end up being pretty "boring" worlds. – FlatterMann Oct 25 '22 at 03:51
  • Can you explain how the Hamiltonian constrains and what exactly you mean by Orbital stability @FlatterMann – tryst with freedom Oct 25 '22 at 05:49
  • How did you conclude that Galilean space time is not equal to Newtonian space time here? – tryst with freedom Oct 25 '22 at 05:51
  • In Hamiltonian mechanics we can constrain the motion of a body to e.g. the surface of a sphere or a torus by choosing generalized coordinates. That is essentially an embedding of these manifolds in a higher dimensional flat space. While it is correct that this is not necessary to do physics, it is the classical approach to Newtonian mechanics on non-flat surfaces or sub-spaces. For orbital stability see e.g. https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/50142/ – FlatterMann Oct 25 '22 at 06:15
  • @FlatterMann I added some new remarks on the answer to address your comments. – Níckolas Alves Oct 25 '22 at 17:31
  • @TrystwithFreedom I added a remark to clarify the differences between Galilean and Newtonian spacetimes. I should remark I don't recall seeing anyone but Schuller referring to "Newtonian spacetime" (although I really like his definition) – Níckolas Alves Oct 25 '22 at 17:32
  • @NíckolasAlves It depends on what physics is to you, I guess. I see physics as the rational explanation of the behavior of matter and radiation, which is the standard definition. This greatly limits what theories have to describe. A mathematical physicist might think that any equation of a certain form, whether it describes anything that is even borderline similar to reality or not, is "physical". For all I know there are no stable orbits in any other dimension than three, for instance. That follows from the virial theorem, if I remember correctly. That limits what physics is to most of us. – FlatterMann Oct 25 '22 at 18:25
  • @FlatterMann I think you're missing the point. For example, very close to the Earth, I can model the gravitational field as a constant field. This will fail at large heights, but is it incredibly simpler. This is a physical situation, even though the theory is an approximation. In GR or in Schuller's language, this is said to be a specific spacetime. Another physical situation is to consider a satellite orbiting the Earth, in which case the field is not constant. This is said to be a different spacetime. Both are physical, but are used in different situations. – Níckolas Alves Oct 25 '22 at 18:33
  • Furthermore, in both cases we're considering the very same number of dimensions (3+1). The difference is mainly in curvature, although it may be accompanied by some topological differences – Níckolas Alves Oct 25 '22 at 18:33
  • @NíckolasAlves No disagreement there. However, there are limits to what can and can not be done. We can, for instance, talk all day long about the consequences of closed time-like curves, but nature simply doesn't provide any for all I know. Maybe it's just nomenclature, but when I took GR we didn't talk about "different spacetimes". It was one 3+1 spacetime that was dynamic under the action of the stress-energy tensor. In Newtonian physics the background is assumed to be rigid, even with gravity. Did we change the language? – FlatterMann Oct 25 '22 at 18:49