Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2009/iii/paper-56/2/a/solution

An asymptotically flat spacetime is a stationary spacetime if it admits a complete stationary Killing vector field , with , timelike near infinity and normalized there to a unit time translation. It need not remain timelike in an ergoregion of a stationary spacetime. It is axisymmetric if it admits an axial Killing vector field , whose flow is a rotational action: its spacelike orbits away from the axis are closed with period , and it vanishes on the regular rotation axis. For a stationary axisymmetric spacetime, the generators can be chosen to commute, . These are geometric symmetries, not merely time-independent or angle-independent coordinate labels.

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