Concepts of Intertial and Gravitational Mass

Abstract

The general relativistic notion of gravitational and inertial mass is discussed from the general viewpoint of the tidal forces implicit in the curvature and the Einstein field equations within ponderable matter. A simple yet rigorously general derivation is given for the Tolman gravitational mass viewpoint wherein the computation of gravitational mass requires both a rest energy contribution (the inertial mass) and a pressure contribution. The pressure contribution is extremely small under normal conditions which implies the equality of gravitational and inertial mass to a high degree of accuracy. However, the pressure contribution is substantial for conformal symmetric systems such as Maxwell radiation, whose constituent photons are massless. Implications of the Tolman mass for standard cosmology and standard high energy particle physics models are briefly explored.