Equivalence of Darmois-Israel and Distributional-Methods for Thin Shells in General Relativity

Abstract

A distributional method to solve the Einstein's field equations for thin shells is formulated. The familiar field equations and jump conditions of Darmois-Israel formalism are derived. A carefull analysis of the Bianchi identities shows that, for cases under consideration, they make sense as distributions and lead to jump conditions of Darmois-Israel formalism.Comment: 17 pages Latex, no figures, to be published in Journ. Math. Phy