Energy Condition - Motivation

Motivation

In general relativity and allied theories, the distribution of the mass, momentum, and stress due to matter and to any non-gravitational fields is described by the energy-momentum tensor (or matter tensor) . However, the Einstein field equation is not very choosy about what kinds of states of matter or nongravitational fields are admissible in a spacetime model. This is both a strength, since a good general theory of gravitation should be maximally independent of any assumptions concerning nongravitational physics, and a weakness, because without some further criterion, the Einstein field equation admits putative solutions with properties most physicists regard as unphysical, i.e. too weird to resemble anything in the real universe even approximately.

The energy conditions represent such criteria. Roughly speaking, they crudely describe properties common to all (or almost all) states of matter and all nongravitational fields which are well-established in physics, while being sufficiently strong to rule out many unphysical "solutions" of the Einstein field equation. (It does not hold for matter described by a super-field, i.e., the Dirac field.)

Mathematically speaking, the most apparent distinguishing feature of the energy conditions is that they are essentially restrictions on the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matter tensor. A more subtle but no less important feature is that they are imposed eventwise, at the level of tangent spaces. Therefore they have no hope of ruling out objectionable global features, such as closed timelike curves.