Painleve-Gullstrand coordinates versus Kerr spacetime geometry

TL;DR

This paper examines the compatibility of Painleve-Gullstrand coordinates with Kerr spacetime geometry, distinguishing between different types of coordinate systems and exploring their potential for laboratory analogue models.

Contribution

It clarifies the limitations and possibilities of using Painleve-Gullstrand coordinates in Kerr spacetime, including global and local statements and implications for analogue models.

Findings

Best achievable is to set lapse to unity with a 3-metric in factorized unimodular form

Distinction between strong and weak Painleve-Gullstrand coordinates clarified

Limited potential for laboratory analogue Kerr spacetime models

Abstract

We discuss the tension between the possible existence of Painleve-Gullstrand coordinate systems versus the explicit geometrical features of the Kerr spacetime; a subject of interest to Professor Thanu Padmanabhan in the weeks immediately preceding his unexpected death. We shall carefully distinguish strong and weak Painleve-Gullstrand coordinate systems, and conformal variants thereof, cataloguing what we know can and cannot be done -- sometimes we can make explicit global statements, sometimes we must resort to implicit local statements. For the Kerr spacetime the best that seems to be achievable is to set the lapse function to unity and represent the spatial slices with a 3-metric in factorized unimodular form; this arises from considering the Doran version of Kerr spacetime in Cartesian coordinates. We finish by exploring the (limited) extent to which this construction might possibly lead to implementing an "analogue spacetime" model suitable for laboratory simulations of the Kerr spacetime.