Third rank Killing tensors in general relativity. The (1+1)-dimensional case

Third rank Killing tensors in (1+1)-dimensional geometries are investigated and classified. It is found that a necessary and sufficient condition for such a geometry to admit a third rank Killing tensor can always be formulated as a quadratic PDE, of order three or lower, in a Kahler type potential for the metric. This is in contrast to the case of first and second rank Killing tensors for which the integrability condition is a linear PDE. The motivation for studying higher rank Killing tensors in (1+1)-geometries, is the fact that exact solutions of the Einstein equations are often associated with a first or second rank Killing tensor symmetry in the geodesic flow formulation of the dynamics. This is in particular true for the many models of interest for which this formulation is (1+1)-dimensional, where just one additional constant of motion suffices for complete integrability. We show that new exact solutions can be found by classifying geometries admitting higher rank Killing tensors.Comment: 16 pages, LaTe

Exact Evolution of Discrete Relativistic Cosmological Models

22 pages, 16 figures22 pages, 16 figuresWe study the effects of inhomogeneities on the evolution of the Universe, by considering a range of cosmological models with discretized matter content. This is done using exact and fully relativistic methods that exploit the symmetries in and about submanifolds of spacetimes that themselves possess no continuous global symmetries. These methods allow us to follow the evolution of our models throughout their entire history, far beyond what has previously been possible. We find that while some space-like curves collapse to anisotropic singularities in finite time, others remain non-singular forever. The resulting picture is of a cosmological spacetime in which some behaviour remains close to Friedmann-like, while other behaviours deviate radically. In particular, we find that large-scale acceleration is possible without any violation of the energy conditions

Trapped gravitational wave modes in stars with R>3M

The possibility of trapped modes of gravitational waves appearing in stars with R>3M is considered. It is shown that the restriction to R<3M in previous studies of trapped modes, using uniform density models, is not essential. Scattering potentials are computed for another family of analytic stellar models showing the appearance of a deep potential well for one model with R>3M. However, the provided example is unstable, although it has a more realistic equation of state in the sense that the sound velocity is finite. On the other hand it is also shown that for some stable models belonging to the same family but having R<3M, the well is significantly deeper than that of the uniform density stars. Whether there are physically realistic equations of state which allow stable configurations with trapped modes therefore remains an open problem.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX2

Self-similar Bianchi type VIII and IX models

It is shown that in transitively self-similar spatially homogeneous tilted perfect fluid models the symmetry vector is not normal to the surfaces of spatial homogeneity. A direct consequence of this result is that there are no self-similar Bianchi VIII and IX tilted perfect fluid models. Furthermore the most general Bianchi VIII and IX spacetime which admit a four dimensional group of homotheties is given.Comment: 5 pages, Latex; One reference and minor clarifications added. To appear in General Relativity and Gravitatio

An exact quantification of backreaction in relativistic cosmology

An important open question in cosmology is the degree to which the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) solutions of Einstein's equations are able to model the large-scale behaviour of the locally inhomogeneous observable universe. We investigate this problem by considering a range of exact n-body solutions of Einstein's constraint equations. These solutions contain discrete masses, and so allow arbitrarily large density contrasts to be modelled. We restrict our study to regularly arranged distributions of masses in topological 3-spheres. This has the benefit of allowing straightforward comparisons to be made with FLRW solutions, as both spacetimes admit a discrete group of symmetries. It also provides a time-symmetric hypersurface at the moment of maximum expansion that allows the constraint equations to be solved exactly. We find that when all the mass in the universe is condensed into a small number of objects (<10) then the amount of backreaction in dust models can be large, with O(1) deviations from the predictions of the corresponding FLRW solutions. When the number of masses is large (>100), however, then our measures of backreaction become small (<1%). This result does not rely on any averaging procedures, which are notoriously hard to define uniquely in general relativity, and so provides (to the best of our knowledge) the first exact and unambiguous demonstration of backreaction in general relativistic cosmological modelling. Discrete models such as these can therefore be used as laboratories to test ideas about backreaction that could be applied in more complicated and realistic settings.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Corrections made to Tables IV and

Exact Hypersurface-Homogeneous Solutions in Cosmology and Astrophysics

A framework is introduced which explains the existence and similarities of most exact solutions of the Einstein equations with a wide range of sources for the class of hypersurface-homogeneous spacetimes which admit a Hamiltonian formulation. This class includes the spatially homogeneous cosmological models and the astrophysically interesting static spherically symmetric models as well as the stationary cylindrically symmetric models. The framework involves methods for finding and exploiting hidden symmetries and invariant submanifolds of the Hamiltonian formulation of the field equations. It unifies, simplifies and extends most known work on hypersurface-homogeneous exact solutions. It is shown that the same framework is also relevant to gravitational theories with a similar structure, like Brans-Dicke or higher-dimensional theories.Comment: 41 pages, REVTEX/LaTeX 2.09 file (don't use LaTeX2e !!!) Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Monotonic functions in Bianchi models: Why they exist and how to find them

All rigorous and detailed dynamical results in Bianchi cosmology rest upon the existence of a hierarchical structure of conserved quantities and monotonic functions. In this paper we uncover the underlying general mechanism and derive this hierarchical structure from the scale-automorphism group for an illustrative example, vacuum and diagonal class A perfect fluid models. First, kinematically, the scale-automorphism group leads to a reduced dynamical system that consists of a hierarchy of scale-automorphism invariant sets. Second, we show that, dynamically, the scale-automorphism group results in scale-automorphism invariant monotone functions and conserved quantities that restrict the flow of the reduced dynamical system.Comment: 26 pages, replaced to match published versio

The influence of the Lande gg-factor in the classical general relativistic description of atomic and subatomic systems

We study the electromagnetic and gravitational fields of the proton and electron in terms of the Einstenian gravity via the introduction of an arbitrary Lande $g$-factor in the Kerr-Newman solution. We show that at length scales of the order of the reduced Compton wavelength, corrections from different values of the $g$-factor are not negligible and discuss the presence of general relativistic effects in highly ionized heavy atoms. On the other hand, since at the Compton-wavelength scale the gravitational field becomes spin dominated rather than mass dominated, we also point out the necessity of including angular momentum as a source of corrections to Newtonian gravity in the quantum description of gravity at this scale.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Double-Kasner Spacetime: Peculiar Velocities and Cosmic Jets

In dynamic spacetimes in which asymmetric gravitational collapse/expansion is taking place, the timelike geodesic equation appears to exhibit an interesting property: Relative to the collapsing configuration, free test particles undergo gravitational "acceleration" and form a double-jet configuration parallel to the axis of collapse. We illustrate this aspect of peculiar motion in simple spatially homogeneous cosmological models such as the Kasner spacetime. To estimate the effect of spatial inhomogeneities on cosmic jets, timelike geodesics in the Ricci-flat double-Kasner spacetime are studied in detail. While spatial inhomogeneities can significantly modify the structure of cosmic jets, we find that under favorable conditions the double-jet pattern can initially persist over a finite period of time for sufficiently small inhomogeneities.Comment: 37 pages, 5 figures; v2: minor typos correcte

Nexus of the cosmic web.

One of the important unknowns of current cosmology concerns the effects of the large scale distribution of matter on the formation and evolution of dark matter haloes and galaxies. One main difficulty in answering this question lies in the absence of a robust and natural way of identifying the large scale environments and their characteristics. This work summarizes the NEXUS+ formalism which extends and improves our multiscale scale-space MMF method. The new algorithm is very successful in tracing the Cosmic Web components, mainly due to its novel filtering of the density in logarithmic space. The method, due to its multiscale and hierarchical character, has the advantage of detecting all the cosmic structures, either prominent or tenuous, without preference for a certain size or shape. The resulting filamentary and wall networks can easily be characterized by their direction, thickness, mass density and density profile. These additional environmental properties allows to us to investigate not only the effect of environment on haloes, but also how it correlates with the environment characteristics