An intrinsic characterization of 2+2 warped spacetimes

We give several equivalent conditions that characterize the 2+2 warped spacetimes: imposing the existence of a Killing-Yano tensor $A$ subject to complementary algebraic restrictions; in terms of the projector $v$ (or of the canonical 2-form $U$) associated with the 2-planes of the warped product. These planes are principal planes of the Weyl and/or Ricci tensors and can be explicitly obtained from them. Therefore, we obtain the necessary and sufficient (local) conditions for a metric tensor to be a 2+2 warped product. These conditions exclusively involve explicit concomitants of the Riemann tensor. We present a similar analysis for the conformally 2+2 product spacetimes and give an invariant classification of them. The warped products correspond to two of these invariant classes. The more degenerate class is the set of product metrics which are also studied from an invariant point of view.Comment: 18 pages; submitted to Class. Quantum Grav

Vacuum type I spacetimes and aligned Papapetrou fields: symmetries

We analyze type I vacuum solutions admitting an isometry whose Killing 2--form is aligned with a principal bivector of the Weyl tensor, and we show that these solutions belong to a family of type I metrics which admit a group $G_3$ of isometries. We give a classification of this family and we study the Bianchi type for each class. The classes compatible with an aligned Killing 2--form are also determined. The Szekeres-Brans theorem is extended to non vacuum spacetimes with vanishing Cotton tensor.Comment: 19 pages; a reference adde

On the separable quotient problem for Banach spaces

While the classic separable quotient problem remains open, we survey general results related to this problem and examine the existence of a particular infinitedimensional separable quotient in some Banach spaces of vector-valued functions, linear operators and vector measures. Most of the results presented are consequence of known facts, some of them relative to the presence of complemented copies of the classic sequence spaces c_0 and l_p, for 1 <= p <= \infty. Also recent results of Argyros - Dodos - Kanellopoulos, and Sliwa are provided. This makes our presentation supplementary to a previous survey (1997) due to Mujica

Aligned electric and magnetic Weyl fields

We analyze the spacetimes admitting a direction for which the relative electric and magnetic Weyl fields are aligned. We give an invariant characterization of these metrics and study the properties of its Debever null vectors. The directions 'observing' aligned electric and magnetic Weyl fields are obtained for every Petrov type. The results on the no existence of purely magnetic solutions are extended to the wider class having homothetic electric and magnetic Weyl fields.Comment: 14 page

Positioning systems in Minkowski space-time: from emission to inertial coordinates

The coordinate transformation between emission coordinates and inertial coordinates in Minkowski space-time is obtained for arbitrary configurations of the emitters. It appears that a positioning system always generates two different coordinate domains, namely, the front and the back emission coordinate domains. For both domains, the corresponding covariant expression of the transformation is explicitly given in terms of the emitter world-lines. This task requires the notion of orientation of an emitter configuration. The orientation is shown to be computable from the emission coordinates for the users of a `central' region of the front emission coordinate domain. Other space-time regions associated with the emission coordinates are also outlined.Comment: 20 pages; 1 figur