Real Kasner and related complex ?windmill? vacuum spacetime metrics

Abstract

The Kasner family of vacuum solutions of Einstein's field equations admits a simply-transitiveH4, a four-parameter local homothetic group of motions which has an AbelianG3 subgroup. It is shown that a complex transformation of coordinates and constants exists which maps this family from the normal Kasner form into a form of vacuum metrics whose Weyl tensors are each Petrov type I and which were published in 1932 by Lewis. These metrics also admit a similarH4; however for one particular metric (for one parameter value) theH4 becomes aG4 and the resultant metric is one which was rediscovered by Petrov in 1962. These Lewis metrics are thus shown to be Kasner metrics over complex fields. Here they are calledwindmill metrics because of the rotating relationship between the coordinates and the Killing vector fields admitted. The principal null directions of thereal Kasner and the windmill metrics are discussed; the two families then provide illustrations of two degenerate classes of spacetime metrics whose Weyl tensors are of Petrov type I, as discussed elsewhere by Arianrhod and McIntosh. An extension of the windmill-type generation of metrics to some other families of metrics is also discussed.