In general relativity, the Raychaudhuri equation, or Landau-Raychaudhuri equation, is a fundamental result describing the motion of nearby bits of matter.
The equation is important as a fundamental lemma for the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems and for the study of exact solutions in general relativity, but has independent interest, since it offers a simple and general validation of our intuitive expectation that gravitation should be a universal attractive force between any two bits of mass-energy in general relativity, as it is in Newton's theory of gravitation.
The equation was discovered independently by Amal Kumar Raychaudhuri and Lev Landau.
Read more about Raychaudhuri Equation: Mathematical Statement, Intuitive Significance, Focusing Theorem, Optical Equations, See Also
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