The nut solution as a gravitational dyon

Abstract

Linearized theory suggests that the NUT solution of Einstein's equations corresponds to a source with both mass and dual mass i.e. to a gravitational dyon. This is born out by the striking identity between the Killing operators of the NUT solution and the ‘total angular momentum’ operators of the monopole. On this basis, Misner's periodic time condition is shown to be the analogue of the Dirac quantization, and results from the requirement that the generators integrate to a global Lie group. It is also shown that there are no bound states for a Klein-Gordon field in NUT space provided the field vanishes in the conventional way at the horizon. For this purpose a generalized ‘tortoise coordinate’ is introduced.