GRAVITATIONAL-FIELD OF A MOVING POINT PARTICLE

The gravitational field of a moving point particle is obtained in a manifestly Lorentz covariant form for both uncharged and charged cases. The general relativistic proper time interval at the location of the particle is the same as the special relativistic one and both the gravitational and electromagnetic self forces vanish, which are consistent with the equations of motion of the point particle. In the static limit, the metric reduces to the Schwarzschild metric in isotropic coordinates. The isotropic coordinates thus turn out to be the most natural coordinates to describe a point particle. Also, the metric tensor which represents the shock wave generated by a massless particle moving with the speed of light is obtained from the zero-mass limit.