The Einstein–Maxwell-particle system in the York canonical basis of ADM tetrad gravity. Part 1. The equations of motion in arbitrary Schwinger time gauges 1This paper is one of three companion papers published in the same issue of Can. J. Phys.

We study the coupling of N charged scalar particles plus the electromagnetic field to Arnowitt–Deser–Misner (ADM) tetrad gravity and its canonical formulation in asymptotically Minkowskian space–times without super-translations. To regularize the self-energies, both the electric charge and the sign of the energy of the particles are Grassmann-valued. The introduction of the noncovariant radiation gauge allows reformulation of the theory in terms of transverse electromagnetic fields and to extract the generalization of the Coulomb interaction among the particles in the riemannian instantaneous 3-spaces of global noninertial frames, the only ones allowed by the equivalence principle. Then we make the canonical transformation to the York canonical basis, where there is a separation between the inertial (gauge) variables and the tidal ones inside the gravitational field and a special role of the eulerian observers associated with the 3+1 splitting of space–time. The Dirac hamiltonian is weakly equal to the weak ADM energy. The Hamilton equations in Schwinger time gauges are given explicitly. In the York basis they are naturally divided into four sets: (i) the contracted Bianchi identities; (ii) the equations for the inertial gauge variables; (iii) the equations for the tidal ones; and (iv) the equations for matter. Finally, we give the restriction of the Hamilton equations and of the constraints to the family of nonharmonic 3-orthogonal gauges, in which the instantaneous riemannian 3-spaces have a nonfixed trace 3K of the extrinsic curvature but a diagonal 3-metric. The inertial gauge variable 3K (the general-relativistic remnant of the freedom in the clock synchronization convention) gives rise to a negative kinetic term in the weak ADM energy vanishing only in the gauges with 3K = 0: is it relevant for dark energy and back-reaction? In the second paper will appear the linearization of the theory in these nonharmonic 3-orthogonal gauges to obtain hamiltonian post-minkowskian gravity (without post-newtonian approximations) with asymptotic Minkowski background, nonflat instantaneous 3-spaces and no post-newtonian expansion. This will allow the exploration of the inertial effects induced by the York time 3K in nonflat 3-spaces (they do not exist in newtonian gravity) and to check how well dark matter can be explained as an inertial aspect of Einstein’s general relativity: this will be done in a third paper on the post-minkowskian 2-body problem in the absence of the electromagnetic field and on its 0.5 post-newtonian limit.