General symmetries of a string fluid space-time

Abstract

It is shown that a string fluid is the simplest anisotropic fluid with vanishing heat flux. Furthermore it has the property that the Ricci tensor is obtained from the energy momentum tensor, and vice versa, if one interchanges the fluid variables. We use previous works on the collineations of anisotropic fluids, which include the string fluid as a particular case, to compute the kinematic and the dynamic effects of certain collineations of a string fluid. It is found that the possible spacetimes, which can carry a string fluid, are severely restricted and the possible string fluids in spacetimes, which can admit them are more or less fixed. We recover previous results on the effect of symmetries in string fluid spacetimes and get many new ones, for example the matter inheritance collineations. The study and the results are presented in a systematic manner, which allows the comprehension and the comparison of the restrictions imposed by each collineation. Finally one can use the same method of work for a systematic study of similar problems.