General Relativity and Gravitation

, Volume 22, Issue 12, pp 1433–1445 | Cite as

Will the real Kasner metric please stand up

  • Alex Harvey
Research Articles
Received:

Abstract

The Kasner metric is one of the more widely studied metrics. Its usefulness for the construction of cosmological models and its utility for certain studies of elementary particles has made it particularly attractive for exploitation. Because of its simplicity it has been “rediscovered” many times and is itself very closely related to metrics given several years earlier by Weyl, Levi-Civita, and Wilson. The form in which Kasner presented it has been virtually forgotten in favor of the dynamic form of the synchronous Bianchi I metric. Kasner metrics may be either static or dynamic. To each static metric there is acognate dynamic metric andvice versa, and the two are related by a complex coordinate transformation. The characterization of a Kasner metric is by means of a set of parameters. It is possible for these to take on complex values with interesting consequences, In the discussion a curious error in the original paper is rectified and some “new” Kasner metrics are presented. The discussion throughout is confined to the vacuum metric.

Keywords

Elementary Particle Differential Geometry Cosmological Model Coordinate Transformation Interesting Consequence 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Plenum Publishing Corporation 1990

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alex Harvey
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of PhysicsQueens College of the City University of New York Kissena BoulevardFlushingUSA

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