Regularizing role of teleparallelism

Abstract

The properties of the gravitational energy-momentum 3-form and of the superpotential 2-form are discussed in the covariant teleparallel framework, where the Weitzenböck connection represents inertial effects related to the choice of the frame. Because of its odd asymptotic behavior, the contribution of the inertial effects often yields unphysical (divergent or trivial) results for the total energy of the system. However, in the covariant teleparallel approach, the energy is always finite and nontrivial. The teleparallel connection plays a role of a regularizing tool which subtracts the inertial effects without distorting the true gravitational contribution. As a crucial test of the covariant formalism, we reanalyze the computation of the total energy of the Schwarzschild and the Kerr solutions. © 2009 The American Physical Society.