Moretti, Valter and Di Criscienzo, Roberto (2008) Local flatness and geodesic deviation of causal geodesics. UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)
Abstract
We analyze the interplay of local flatness and geodesic deviation measured for causal geodesics starting from the remark that, form a physical viewpoint, the geodesic deviation can be measured for causal geodesic, observing the motion of (infinitesimal) falling bodies, but it can hardly be evaluated on spacelike geodesics. We establish that a generic spacetime is (locally) flat if and only if there is no geodesic deviation for timelike geodesics or, equivalently, there is no geodesic deviation for null geodesics.
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