Shear-free spherically symmetric perfect fluid solutions with conformal symmetry

Abstract

In 1987, Dyer, McVittie and Oattes determined the general relativistic field equations for a shear-free perfect fluid with spherical symmetry and a conformal Killing vector in thet-r plane, which depend on an arbitrary constantm. Two particular solutions of these equations were given recently by Maharaj, Leach and Maartens, as well as a partial solution thought to be valid for almost allm. In this paper, this solution is completed for four values ofm, and it is shown that it cannot be completed for any others by currently available techniques; however, a new solution of a different form, but also depending on a Weierstrass elliptic function, is found for a further value ofm. None of these metrics are conformally flat; one of them has a constant expansion rate.