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We present a critical review about the study of linear perturbations of matched spacetimes including gauge problems. We analyse the freedom introduced in the perturbed matching by the presence of background symmetries and revisit the particular case of spherically symmetry in n-dimensions. This analysis includes settings with boundary layers such as brane world models and shell cosmologies., Comment: 18 pages, plain LaTeX file

A relatively recent study by Mars and Senovilla provided us with a uniqueness result for the exterior vacuum gravitational field generated by an isolated distribution of matter in axial rotation in equilibrium in General Relativity. The generalisation to exterior electrovacuum gravitational fields, to include charged rotating objects, is presented here., Comment: LaTeX, 21 pages, uses iopart style

The study of the matching of stationary and axisymmetric spacetimes with Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker spacetimes preserving the axial symmetry is presented. We show, in particular, that any orthogonally transitive stationary and axisymmetric region in FLRW must be static, irrespective of the matter content. Therefore, previous results on static regions in FLRW cosmologies apply. As a result, the only stationary and axisymmetric vacuum region that can be matched to a (non-static) FLRW spacetime is a spherically symmetric region of Schwarzschild. This constitutes another uniqueness result for the Einstein-Straus model (as well as its Oppenheimer-Snyder counterpart), and hence another indication of its unsuitability as an answer to the influence of the cosmic expansion on local physics., Comment: 24 pages. Submitted to CQG

We study the exterior vacuum problem for first and second order stationary and axially symmetric perturbations of static bodies. The boundary conditions and their compatibility for the existence of an asymptotically flat exterior solution are discussed., Comment: LaTeX, 6 pages, uses ere04.cls style, to appear in the proceedings of the Spanish Relativity Meeting ERE'04

We study generalisations of the Einstein--Straus model in cylindrically symmetric settings by considering the matching of a static space-time to a non-static spatially homogeneous space-time, preserving the symmetry. We find that such models possess severe restrictions, such as constancy of one of the metric coefficients in the non-static part. A consequence of this is that it is impossible to embed static locally cylindrically symmetric objects in reasonable spatially homogeneous cosmologies., Comment: LaTeX, 3 pages, submitted to Proceedings of the MGX

In the literature, the matchings between spacetimes have been most of the times implicitly assumed to preserve some of the symmetries of the problem involved. But no definition for this kind of matching was given until recently. Loosely speaking, the matching hypersurface is restricted to be tangent to the orbits of a desired local group of symmetries admitted at both sides of the matching and thus admitted by the whole matched spacetime. This general definition is shown to lead to conditions on the properties of the preserved groups. First, the algebraic type of the preserved group must be kept at both sides of the matching hypersurface. Secondly, the orthogonal transivity of two-dimensional conformal (in particular isometry) groups is shown to be preserved (in a way made precise below) on the matching hypersurface. This result has in particular direct implications on the studies of axially symmetric isolated bodies in equilibrium in General Relativity, by making up the first condition that determines the suitability of convective interiors to be matched to vacuum exteriors. The definition and most of the results presented in this paper do not depend on the dimension of the manifolds involved nor the signature of the metric, and their applicability to other situations and other higher dimensional theories is manifest., Comment: LaTeX, 19 pages

The Bel tensor is divergence-free in some important cases leading to the existence of conserved currents associated to Killing vectors analogously to those of the energy-momentum tensor. When the divergence of the Bel tensor does not vanish one can study the interchange of some quantities between the gravitational and other fields obtaining mixed total conserved currents. Nevertheless, the Bel currents are shown to be conserved (independently of the matter content) if the Killing vectors satisfy some very general conditions. These properties are similar to some very well known statements for the energy-momentum tensor., Comment: LaTeX, 6 pages. Uses sprocl.sty. To appear in the proceedings of the Spanish Relativity Meeting ERE'00

We explore the possibility of having a good description of classical signature change in the brane scenario., Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 1 figure. Uses epsfig package. Slightly shorter version to match the published version. Reference added

We present an explicit three-parameter class of $p=\gamma \varrho$, ($-1/3\leq\gamma<1$), cosmological models admitting a two-dimensional group $G_{2}$ of isometries acting on spacelike surfaces. The family is self-similar in the sense that it has a further homothetic vector field and it contains subfamilies of both (previously unknown) tilted and non-tilted Bianchi models with that equation of state. This is the first algebraically general class of solutions of this kind including dust inhomogeneous solutions. The whole class presents a universal spacelike big-bang singularity in the finite past. More interestingly, the case $p=\varrho /3$ constitutes a new two-parameter inhomogeneous subfamily which can be viewed as a Bianchi V background with a gravitational wave travelling orthogonally to the surfaces of transitivity of the $G_{2}$ group. This wave generates the {\it inhomogeneity} of the spacetime and is related to the sound waves {\it tilting} the perfect fluid. It seems to be the first explicit exact example of a gravitational wave travelling along a homogeneous background that has a realistic equation of state $p=\varrho /3$., Comment: LaTeX, 25 pages, 3 figures. Uses epsfig package. One reference added; minor changes. To appear in Phys.Rev.D

We present an explicit exact solution of Einstein's equations for an inhomogeneous dust universe with cylindrical symmetry. The spacetime is extremely simple but nonetheless it has new surprising features. The universe is ``closed'' in the sense that the dust expands from a big-bang singularity but recollapses to a big-crunch singularity. In fact, both singularities are connected so that the whole spacetime is ``enclosed'' within a single singularity of general character. The big-bang is not simultaneous for the dust, and in fact the age of the universe as measured by the dust particles depends on the spatial position, an effect due to the inhomogeneity, and their total lifetime has no non-zero lower limit. Part of the big-crunch singularity is naked. The metric depends on a parameter and contains flat spacetime as a non-singular particular case. For appropriate values of the parameter the spacetime is a small perturbation of Minkowski spacetime. This seems to indicate that flat spacetime may be unstable against some global {\it non-vacuum} perturbations., Comment: LaTeX, 6 pages, 1 figure. Uses epsfig package. Submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravity

Following a recent work in which it is shown that a spacetime admitting Lie-group actions may be disjointly decomposed into a a closed subset with no interior plus a dense finite union of open sets in each of which the character and dimension of the group orbits as well as the Petrov type are constant, the aim of this work is to include the Segre types of the Ricci tensor (and hence of the Einstein tensor) into the decomposition. We also show how this type of decomposition can be carried out for any type of property of the spacetime depending on the existence of a continuous endomorphism., Comment: 15 pages, provisionally scheduled for April 1999 in Class. Quantum Grav