English

The Lanczos potential for Weyl-candidate tensors exists only in four dimensions

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2015-06-25 v2

Abstract

We prove that a Lanczos potential L_abc for the Weyl candidate tensor W_abcd does not generally exist for dimensions higher than four. The technique is simply to assume the existence of such a potential in dimension n, and then check the integrability conditions for the assumed system of differential equations; if the integrability conditions yield another non-trivial differential system for L_abc and W_abcd, then this system's integrability conditions should be checked; and so on. When we find a non-trivial condition involving only W_abcd and its derivatives, then clearly Weyl candidate tensors failing to satisfy that condition cannot be written in terms of a Lanczos potential L_abc.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/9711022,
  title  = {The Lanczos potential for Weyl-candidate tensors exists only in four dimensions},
  author = {S. Brian Edgar and Anders Höglund},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/9711022},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

11 pages, LaTeX, Heavily revised April 2000