On causality violation on a Kerr-de Sitter spacetime

Abstract

The causal properties of the family of Kerr-de Sitter spacetimes are analyzed and compared to those of the Kerr family. At first we show that a Kerr-de Sitter spacetime can be viewed as an assembly of Carter's blocks i.e. four dimensional spacetime regions contained within Killing horizons or a Killing horizon and the asymptotic de Sitter region. From this perspective and leaving aside topological identifications, the causal properties of a Kerr de Sitter spacetime are determined by the causal properties of the individual Carter's blocks viewed as spacetimes in their own right. We show that any Carter's block is stably causal except for the blocks that contain the ring singularity. The latter are vicious sets: any two events within such block can be connected by a future (respectively past) directed timelike curve. This behavior is identical to the causal behavior of the Boyer-Lindquist blocks that contains the Kerr ring singularity which are also vicious sets. On the other hand, while for the case of a naked Kerr singularity the entire spacetime is a vicious set and thus closed timelike curves pass through any event including events lying in the asymptotic region, for the case of a Kerr-de Sitter spacetime the cosmological horizons imply that the asymptotic de Sitter region is causally well behaved. In that regard a positive cosmological constant appears to improve the causal behavior of the underlying spacetime.