The Chevreton tensor and Einstein-Maxwell spacetimes conformal to Einstein spaces

• In this paper, we characterize the source-free Einstein–Maxwell spacetimes which have a trace-free Chevreton tensor. We show that this is equivalent to the Chevreton tensor being of pure radiation type and that it restricts the spacetimes to Petrov type N or O. We prove that the trace of the Chevreton tensor is related to the Bach tensor and use this to find all Einstein–Maxwell spacetimes with a zero cosmological constant that have a vanishing Bach tensor. Among these spacetimes we then look for those which are conformal to Einstein spaces. We find that the electromagnetic field and the Weyl tensor must be aligned, and in the case that the electromagnetic field is null, the spacetime must be conformally Ricci-flat and all such solutions are known. In the non-null case, since the general solution is not known on a closed form, we settle by giving the integrability conditions in the general case, but we do give new explicit examples of Einstein–Maxwell spacetimes that are conformal to Einstein spaces, and we also find examples where the vanishing of the Bach tensor does not imply that the spacetime is conformal to a C-space. The non-aligned Einstein–Maxwell spacetimes with vanishing Bach tensor are conformally C-spaces, but none of them are conformal to Einstein spaces.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Matematik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Mathematics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

MATHEMATICS

MATEMATIK

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)