Existence of gradient CKV and gradient conformally stationary LRS spacetimes

Abstract

Abstract In this work, we study the existence of gradient (proper) CKVs in locally rotationally symmetric spacetimes (LRS), those CKVs in the space spanned by the tangent to observers’ congruence and the preferred spatial direction, allowing us to provide a (partial) characterization of gradient conformally static (GCSt) LRS solutions. Irrrotational solutions with non-zero spatial twist admit an irrotational timelike gradient conformal Killing vector field and hence are GCSt. In the case that both the vorticity and twist vanish, that is, restricting to the LRS II subclass, we obtain the necessary and sufficient condition for the spacetime to admit a gradient CKV. This is given by a single wave-like PDE, whose solutions are in bijection to the gradient CKVs on the spacetime. We then introduce a characterization of these spacetimes as GCSt using the character of the divergence of the CKV, provided that the metric functions of the spacetimes obey certain inequalities.