The tensorial representation of the distributional stress–energy quadrupole and its dynamics

Abstract

Abstract We investigate stress–energy tensors constructed from the covariant derivatives of delta functions on a worldline. Since covariant derivatives are used all the components transform as tensors. We derive the dynamical equations for the components, up to quadrupole order. The components do, however, depend in a non-tensorial way, on a choice of a vector along the worldline. We also derive a number of important results about general multipoles, including that their components are unique, and all multipoles can be written using covariant derivatives. We show how the components of a multipole are related to standard moments of a tensor field, by parallelly transporting that tensor field.