New perspectives on the TOV equilibrium from a dual null approach

TL;DR

This paper generalizes the TOV equilibrium equation to models with various symmetries using a dual null formalism, revealing energy condition violations and providing unified solutions for static and homogeneous spacetimes.

Contribution

It introduces a unified approach to derive generalized TOV equations for non-spherical symmetries and discusses energy condition violations in these models.

Findings

Generalized TOV equations for spherical, planar, and hyperbolic symmetries.

Static non-spherical solutions violate the weak energy condition.

Homogeneous models satisfy a cosmological constant-like equation.

Abstract

The TOV equation appears as the relativistic counterpart of the classical condition for hydrostatic equilibrium. In the present work we aim at showing that a generalised TOV equation also characterises the equilibrium of models endowed with other symmetries besides spherical. We apply the dual null formalism to spacetimes with two dimensional spherical, planar and hyperbolic symmetries with a perfect fluid as the source. We also assume a Killing vector field orthogonal to the surfaces of symmetry, which gives us static solutions, in the timelike Killing field case, and homogeneous dynamical solutions in the case the Killing field is spacelike. In order to treat equally all the aforementioned cases, we discuss the definition of a quasi-local energy for the spacetimes with planar and hyperbolic foliations, since the Hawking-Hayward definition only applies to compact foliations. After this procedure, we are able to translate our geometrical formalism to the fluid dynamics language in a unified way, to find the generalized TOV equation, for the three cases when the solution is static, and to obtain the evolution equation, for the homogeneous spacetime cases. Remarkably, we show that the static solutions which are not spherically symmetric violate the weak energy condition (WEC). We have also shown that the counterpart of the TOV equation for the spatially homogeneous models is just the familiar equation \r{ho} + P = 0, defining a cosmological constant-type behaviour, both in the hyperbolic and spherical cases. This implies a violation of the strong energy condition in both cases, added to the above mentioned violation of the weak energy condition in the hyperbolic case. We illustrate our unified treatment obtaining analogs of Schwarzschild interior solution, for an incompressible fluid $\rho = \rho_0$ constant.