The Kiselev black hole is neither perfect fluid, nor is it quintessence

TL;DR

This paper clarifies that the Kiselev black hole spacetime is neither a perfect fluid nor quintessence, correcting common misconceptions and highlighting the importance of accurate terminology and interpretation in the literature.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis showing the Kiselev spacetime's pressure anisotropy and clarifies its non-equivalence to perfect fluid or quintessence models.

Findings

Kiselev spacetime has non-zero pressure anisotropy unless w=-1

The average pressure equals w times the energy density

Misinterpretations in literature regarding perfect fluid and quintessence are corrected

Abstract

The Kiselev black hole spacetime, \[ ds^2 = - \left(1-{2m\over r} - {K\over r^{1+3w}} \right) dt^2 + {dr^2\over1-{2m\over r} - {K\over r^{1+3w}}} + r^2 \,d\Omega_2^2, \] is an extremely popular toy model, with over 200 direct and indirect citations as of 2019. Unfortunately, despite repeated assertions to the contrary, this is not a perfect fluid spacetime. The relative pressure anisotropy and average pressure are easily calculated to satisfy \[ \Delta = {\Delta p\over \bar p} = {p_r - p_t \over {1\over3} (p_r+2p_t)} =- {3(1+w)\over 2 w}; \qquad\qquad {\bar p\over \rho} = {{1\over3} (p_r + 2p_t)\over \rho} = w. \] The relative pressure anisotropy $\Delta$ is generally a non-zero constant, (unless $w=-1$, corresponding to Schwarzschild-(anti)-de Sitter spacetime). Kiselev's original paper was very careful to point this out in the calculation, but then in the discussion made a somewhat unfortunate choice of terminology which has (with very limited exceptions) been copied into the subsequent literature. Perhaps worse, Kiselev's use of the word "quintessence" does not match the standard usage in the cosmology community, leading to another level of unfortunate and unnecessary confusion. Very few of the subsequent follow-up papers get these points right, so a brief explicit comment is warranted.