Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-general-relativity-ii-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2021/1/d/i/solution

For relativistic dust, , the relativistic Euler equation gives . The nowhere-vanishing density therefore makes the four-acceleration zero: is a timelike geodesic vector field. Let be the differential one-form obtained by the musical isomorphism. Its exterior derivative satisfies
Here is the interior product. By hypersurface orthogonality and the Frobenius theorem, . Taking the interior product and using gives
Thus . By the Poincaré lemma, locally , and then . Choose spatial coordinate functions on one level set of and extend them constantly along the integral curves of a vector field , using its smooth flow. This constructs . Since ,
The metric on the orthogonal complement of a timelike vector is positive-definite, so the synchronous coordinates for irrotational dust have
This construction is local; crossing geodesics can prevent these synchronous coordinates from covering a larger region.

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