A gravitational spin-orbit interaction in Poincar\'e gauge theory

Abstract

We show a gravitational spin-orbit interaction that can potentially modify the space-time geometry naturally emerges in the framework of Poincar\'e gauge theory. For this purpose, we derive the field equations of a particular model with cubic order invariants and demonstrate the existence of analytical solutions which display an interaction between the intrinsic and extrinsic angular momentum parameters in the gravitational action, in analogy to the spin-orbit interaction arising from atomic and nuclear systems. Due to the highly nonlinear character of the field equations under stationary and axisymmetric conditions, we focus on a degenerate case which simplifies their complexity, at the cost of constraining the geometry to the Kerr space-time. Thereby, our results indicate more general solutions with a spin-orbit interaction beyond the Kerr space-time are expected to arise in the nondegenerate models of Poincar\'e gauge theory.