Gravitational energy or gravitational potential energy is the
potential energy a
massive object has in relation to another massive object due to
gravity. It is the potential energy associated with the
gravitational field, which is released (converted into
kinetic energy) when the objects
fall towards each other. Gravitational potential energy increases when two objects are brought further apart.
Formulation
For two pairwise interacting point particles, the gravitational potential energy is given by
where and are the masses of the two particles, is the distance between them, and is the
gravitational constant.[1]
Close to the Earth's surface, the gravitational field is approximately constant, and the gravitational potential energy of an object reduces to
where is the object's mass, is the
gravity of Earth, and is the height of the object's
center of mass above a chosen reference level.[1]
Newtonian mechanics
In
classical mechanics, two or more
masses always have a
gravitational potential.
Conservation of energy requires that this gravitational field energy is always
negative, so that it is zero when the objects are infinitely far apart.[2] The gravitational potential energy is the potential energy an object has because it is within a gravitational field.
To get the total work done by an external force to bring point mass from infinity to the final distance (for example the radius of Earth) of the two mass points, the force is integrated with respect to displacement:
Because , the total work done on the object can be written as:[4]
Gravitational Potential Energy
In the common situation where a much smaller mass is moving near the surface of a much larger object with mass , the gravitational field is nearly constant and so the expression for gravitational energy can be considerably simplified. The change in potential energy moving from the surface (a distance from the center) to a height above the surface is
If is small, as it must be close to the surface where is constant, then this expression can be simplified using the
binomial approximation
to
As the gravitational field is , this reduces to
Taking at the surface (instead of at infinity), the familiar expression for gravitational potential energy emerges:[5]
In
general relativity gravitational energy is extremely complex, and there is no single agreed upon definition of the concept. It is sometimes modelled via the
Landau–Lifshitz pseudotensor[6] that allows retention for the energy–momentum conservation laws of
classical mechanics. Addition of the matter
stress–energy tensor to the Landau–Lifshitz pseudotensor results in a combined matter plus gravitational energy pseudotensor that has a vanishing
4-
divergence in all frames—ensuring the conservation law. Some people object to this derivation on the grounds that
pseudotensors are inappropriate in general relativity, but the divergence of the combined matter plus gravitational energy pseudotensor is a
tensor.[citation needed]
^For a demonstration of the negativity of gravitational energy, see
Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins (Random House, 1997),
ISBN0-224-04448-6, Appendix A—Gravitational Energy.