Nonlinear effects of general relativity from multiscale structure

When do the nonlinear effects of general relativity matter in astrophysical situations? They are obviously relevant for very compact sources of the gravitational field, such as neutron stars or black holes. In this paper I discuss another, less obvious situation, in which large relativistic effects may arise due to a complicated, multiscale structure of the matter distribution. I present an exact solution with an inhomogeneous energy density distribution in the form of a hierarchy of nested voids and overdensities of various sizes, extending from the homogeneity scale down to arbitrary small scales. I show that although each of the voids and overdensities seems to be very weakly relativistic, and thus easy to describe using the linearized general relativity, the solution taken as a whole lies in fact in the nonlinear regime. Its nonlinear properties are most easily seen when we compare the ADM mass of the solution and the integral of the local mass density: the difference between them, i.e. the relativistic mass deficit, can be significant provided that the inhomogeneities extend to sufficiently small scales. The non-additivity of masses implies a large backreaction effect, i.e. significant discrepancy between the averaged, large-scale effective stress-energy tensor and the naive average of the local energy density. I show that this is a general relativistic effect arising due to the inhomogeneous, multiscale structure. I also discuss the relevance of the results in cosmology and relativistic astrophysics.