Stationary spacetime

A stationary spacetime admits a Killing vector field that is timelike in the region representing stationary observers, in particular near infinity for an asymptotically flat stationary black hole.

For a chosen stationary time-translation Killing vector field $k$, this is the region where $k$ is spacelike and observers following its orbits cannot be timelike. In an asymptotically flat geometry, the usual choice is the nonrotating time translation at infinity. The stationary-limit boundary has $g(k,k)=0$, but need not be an event horizon. The Kerr ergoregion is a particular rotating-black-hole example: its outer boundary touches the horizon only on the axis for nonzero subextremal spin.

A nonstationary spacetime lacks the stationary time-translation symmetry in the domain being considered. Without a preferred suitable timelike Killing vector field, the classical geometry alone does not determine a unique positive-frequency solution subspace for quantization.

A strictly stationary spacetime has a globally defined Killing vector that is timelike everywhere.

A static spacetime has a timelike Killing vector that is hypersurface orthogonal. Coordinates adapted to it can be chosen with no time-space cross terms.

A timelike Killing vector with hypersurface orthogonality admits local coordinates with $k={\partial }_t$ and $d{s}^2=N(\mathbf{x}{)}^{2}d{t}^2-h_{ij}(\mathbf{x})d{x}^{i}d{x}^j$. The only connection coefficients with time indices that can be nonzero are ${\Gamma }_{0i}^0={\partial }_i\log N$ and ${\Gamma }_{00}^i=N{h}^{ij}{\partial }_{j}N$. Substitution into the Ricci tensor gives $R_{0i}=0$. Thus $R_{ab}{k}^b$ has only its time component and is proportional to $k_a$. Equivalently $k_d{R}^d{}_{[a}{k}_{b]}=0$. This local statement does not require the Vacuum Einstein equations and is independent of the overall curvature-sign convention.

Rescaling the spatial metric by the squared static lapse function gives a useful three-dimensional quotient metric $\gamma$. In Vacuum Einstein equations, its Ricci tensor obeys $R_{ij}(\gamma )=2{\partial }_{i}U{\partial }_{j}U$, while $U$ is harmonic. The contracted Bianchi identity recovers the harmonic equation without dividing at critical points.

On a complete nonsingular spatial quotient with no inner boundary and standard asymptotic flatness, a bounded harmonic function tending to zero on all ends is zero. The static vacuum conformal spatial metric is then Ricci flat; three-dimensional curvature from the Ricci tensor makes it flat. Completeness and an ordinary Euclidean asymptotic end exclude nontrivial flat quotients, yielding Minkowski spacetime with the standard global time coordinate.

The stress-energy current from a Killing vector associated with the static time translation gives a positive conserved energy for a massive real scalar. Its hypersurface independence follows from current conservation and the divergence theorem.

A stationary axisymmetric spacetime has commuting stationary and axial Killing vector fields, with the axial field having closed spacelike orbits.