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# Axially symmetric Einstein-Straus models

## I Introduction

The influence of the large scale geometry of the Universe on the local physics around astrophysical objects is a very old and fundamental question in gravitational physics. The fact that the geometry of the Universe as a whole can be approximated very accurately by an expanding Friedman-Lemaître (FL) model leads naturally to consider whether the cosmological expansion has any effect on the local physics at astrophysical scales. This type of question was probably first addressed by McVittie  who used a spherically symmetric spacetime supposedly describing a point particle immersed in a Friedman-Lemaître background (see, however, ). This metric was later analyzed in more detail by Järnefeld . Both authors concluded that the effect of the cosmological expansion on the planetary orbits is very small and with no measurable consequences. More recently, Gautreau  analyzed the problem by using an inhomogeneous and spherically symmetric model in the so-called curvature coordinates  (see  for a review of these results). However, the generally accepted answer to this problem was given by Einstein and Straus in  where a model describing a massive point particle surrounded by a spherically symmetric vacuum region embedded in a dust FL cosmology was presented (the now so-called Einstein-Straus model). The boundary of the vacuum region is a two-sphere comoving with the cosmological flow. Thus, Einstein and Straus showed the possibility of having static regions embedded in an expanding cosmological background thus implying that the cosmic expansion does not influence the local physics around the massive object. Despite its clear implications and simplicity, Einstein and Straus’ construction suffers from several important limitations. First, the interior geometry of the static region is exactly spherically symmetric and its boundary is a two-sphere comoving with the cosmological flow. This a very strong assumption, specially regarding the shape of the static cavity. Second, given the dust background metric, the radius of the vacuum region surrounding the compact object is uniquely fixed by its mass. This implies that some situations of astrophysical interest are not satisfactorily described by the Einstein-Straus model. Furthermore, Krasiński has argued  that the model is unstable, meaning that a matching between the vacuum cavity and the FL background with a slightly bigger radius than the Einstein-Straus value makes the static region expand with respect to the cosmological flow (and vice versa for a smaller radius).

Hence, more general models should be analyzed in order to reach a definitive conclusion on whether the influence of the cosmological expansion on the local physics is indeed vanishing and, in that case, on the suitability of the Einstein and Straus’ construction to provide a completely satisfactory explanation. In order to test the importance of the spherically symmetric assumption, other geometries for the interior region (especially the shape of the boundary) should be considered. Since the local geometry is generally believed to be static (which is the translation of the null influence of the background expansion), the problem can be formulated as to whether non-spherical static cavities can be embedded in a FL cosmology. In a very recent paper, Senovilla and Vera  proved the surprising fact that embedding a cylindrically symmetric static region in an expanding FL cosmology is always impossible (irrespective of the matter contents inside the cavity). This result supports the view that spherical symmetry may indeed be an essential ingredient for the existence of the static region. In order to clarify this question, we address the existence of static cavities in a FL background in a rather general situation. The essential simplifying assumption we make (otherwise the problem becomes formidable) is that the interior static region is axially symmetric, both in shape and in spacetime geometry (no restrictions on the interior energy-momentum contents are imposed). This assumption is physically very reasonable because axial symmetry is likely to be present in many realistic situations. The second assumption we make is that the two canonical time functions in each region (the cosmic time in the FL background and the static time in the interior region) match properly across the boundary of the static region, so that the global spacetime has a well-defined and natural time function. This model is general enough to include both spherical symmetry and cylindrical symmetry as particular cases and, hence, its analysis will clarify to what extent the extreme situations in which the matching is possible (spherically symmetry) and never feasible (cylindrical symmetry) are generic.

Considering static regions embedded in an expanding background requires the use of the theory of matching between spacetimes. This consists in imposing the matching conditions which can be viewed as a set of partial differential equations to be solved. When the symmetry of the matching problem is high enough (i.e. when the two spacetimes to be matched possess at least two isometries which are preserved by the matching hypersurface), the equations become ordinary differential equations and the problem simplifies considerably. Most of the explicit matchings which have been performed in the literature allow for this type of reduction. In particular, this is true for the Einstein-Straus model and the cylindrically symmetric case described above. In our case, however, the problem is technically more complex because the global spacetime possesses only one isometry, namely axial symmetry. In order to solve it, we use a set of constraint matching conditions, which are necessary consequences of the matching conditions on any spacelike two-dimensional surface embedded into the matching hypersurface. They appear naturally when developing a $`2+1`$ geometrical decomposition of the matching conditions into a set of constraints on initial spacelike two-surfaces and a set of evolution equations determining how the two-surface must evolve in order to generate the three-dimensional matching hypersurface. The full decomposition has not been completed yet and will be reported elsewhere. For the purposes of this paper it will suffice exploiting the set of constraint matching conditions.

The paper is organised as follows. In section 2, the matching theory between spacetimes is briefly reviewed and the constraint matching conditions on spacelike two-dimensional surfaces are presented. In section 3, the matching problem between a static and axially symmetric spacetime and a Friedman-Lemaître expanding cosmology is solved. Since the problem is technically non-trivial, the procedure is described in some detail. First, the constraint matching conditions are imposed. They restrict the form of the matching hypersurface severely. It turns out that the most general matching hypersurface consists of a collection of two-spheres, two-planes or hyperbolic planes centred on the axis of symmetry and moving arbitrarily along this axis. For closed FL models only two-spheres are possible; for flat FL models both two-spheres and two-planes are allowed while for the open case all three cases are possible. We restrict the analysis to the two-sphere case because this is the only one describing a spatially compact region embedded in a FL cosmology. Then, the remaining set of matching conditions are imposed. They determine the interior geometry of the static region in terms of the background FL metric and the function $`r(t)`$ describing how the radius of the two-spheres generating the matching hypersurface varies with time. The motion of the set of two-spheres along the axis of symmetry is also determined by the background metric and $`r(t)`$. In section 4, a detailed study of the static and axially symmetric interior geometry is performed and a number of important conclusions are obtained. In particular, the interior metric is shown to be nearly spherically symmetric with both its energy-momentum tensor and Petrov type of the same type as in the exact spherically symmetric case. Furthermore, analyzing the most widely used energy-momentum tensors for the interior region (vacuum, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-term, perfect fluid and electrovacuum) we show that the interior geometry must be exactly spherically symmetric in all those cases and the boundary of the cavity must be generated by a two-sphere with its centre being at rest with respect to the cosmological flow. Hence, we conclude that the Einstein-Straus model is essentially unique (when axial symmetry is imposed) and that the spherical symmetry assumption is indeed crucial for the existence of static cavities inside a FL cosmology. Consequently, obtaining a robust model determining whether or not the cosmological expansion has any influence on the local physics is still an open problem which deserves further analysis and investigation.

## II Junction of spacetimes and constraint matching conditions.

The matching (see  and references therein) between two spacetimes with boundary, $`(V^+,g^+)`$ and $`(V^{},g^{})`$ with corresponding boundaries $`\mathrm{\Omega }^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$, consists in constructing a spacetime manifold $`(V,g)`$ by identifying the points, (and the tangent spaces) on the two boundaries, which are therefore called matching hypersurfaces. The point-to-point identification requires the existence of a diffeomorphism between $`\mathrm{\Omega }^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$. Therefore, they can be also considered as diffeomorphic to an abstract three-dimensional manifold $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ so that there exist two embeddings

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^+:\mathrm{\Omega }V^+,\mathrm{\Phi }^{}:\mathrm{\Omega }V^{},`$

satisfying $`\mathrm{\Phi }^+\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)=\mathrm{\Omega }^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}\left(\mathrm{\Omega }\right)=\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$. Using local coordinates $`\left\{\xi ^i\right\}`$ for $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ ($`i,j,\mathrm{}=1,2,3`$), $`\left\{x_+^\alpha \right\}`$ for $`V^+`$ ($`\alpha ,\beta ,\mathrm{}=0,1,2,3`$) and $`\left\{x_{}^\alpha \right\}`$ for $`V^{}`$ the two embeddings take a local form

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^+:\xi ^ix_+^\alpha =x_+^\alpha \left(\xi \right),\mathrm{\Phi }^{}:\xi ^ix_{}^\alpha =x_{}^\alpha \left(\xi \right),`$

where $`x_+^\alpha \left(\xi \right)`$ and $`x_{}^\alpha \left(\xi \right)`$ are functions of $`\xi ^i`$. As an important theorem by Clarke and Dray  shows, the construction of a spacetime $`V=V^{}V^+`$ with continuous metric $`g`$ can be performed if and only if the two first fundamental forms $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{}^{+}{}_{}{}^{}\left(g^+\right)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{}^{}{}_{}{}^{}\left(g^{}\right)`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ coincide ($`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}`$ denotes the pull-back of the map $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$). In local coordinates, these conditions read

$$g_{\alpha \beta }^+|_{x_+\left(\xi \right)}\frac{x_+^\alpha }{\xi ^i}\frac{x_+^\beta }{\xi ^j}=g_{\alpha \beta }^{}|_{x_{}\left(\xi \right)}\frac{x_{}^\alpha }{\xi ^i}\frac{x_{}^\beta }{\xi ^j},$$
(1)
and will be called preliminary matching conditions. When (1) is fulfilled, the Riemann tensor in $`(V,g)`$ is well-defined in a distributional sense. In general, this distribution has a Dirac delta part with support on the matching hypersurface, which can be used, when appropriate, to describe thin shells of matter and/or pure gravitational field. Whenever these physical objects are absent, the Dirac delta contribution must vanish and the second set of matching conditions must be imposed. First, two transverse vector fields, $`\stackrel{}{l}_+`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }^+`$ and $`\stackrel{}{l}_{}`$ on $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$, (called rigging vector fields) must be chosen. As they prescribe how the tangent spaces are to be identified, their choice must be compatible with the continuity of the metric in $`V`$. This demands

$`g_{\alpha \beta }^+l_+^\alpha l_+^\beta |_{x_+\left(\xi \right)}=g_{\alpha \beta }^{}l_{}^\alpha l_{}^\beta |_{x_{}\left(\xi \right)},`$ (2)
$`g_{\alpha \beta }^+l_+^\alpha |_{x_+\left(\xi \right)}{\displaystyle \frac{x_+^\beta }{\xi ^j}}=g_{\alpha \beta }^{}l_{}^\alpha |_{x_{}\left(\xi \right)}{\displaystyle \frac{x_{}^\beta }{\xi ^j}}.`$ (3)
The two riggings $`\stackrel{}{l}_+`$ and $`\stackrel{}{l}_{}`$ must have different relative orientations with respect to $`\mathrm{\Omega }^+`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{}`$, respectively (i.e. either $`\stackrel{}{l}_+`$ points outside $`V^+`$ everywhere and $`\stackrel{}{l}_{}`$ points inside $`V^{}`$ everywhere or vice versa). Once the riggings are chosen, the matching conditions demand that the pull-back of the covariant derivative of the rigging one-form (obtained by lowering the index to $`\stackrel{}{l}`$) coincides when calculated using any of both embeddings. In local coordinates,

$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}l_{+\beta }|_{x_+\left(\xi \right)}{\displaystyle \frac{x_+^\alpha }{\xi ^i}}_\alpha ^+\left({\displaystyle \frac{x_+^\beta }{\xi ^j}}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{}{}}l_\beta |_{x_{}\left(\xi \right)}{\displaystyle \frac{x_{}^\alpha }{\xi ^i}}_\alpha ^{}\left({\displaystyle \frac{x_{}^\beta }{\xi ^j}}\right)`$ (4)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}l_{+\beta }|_{x_+\left(\xi \right)}\left({\displaystyle \frac{^2x_+^\beta }{\xi ^i\xi ^j}}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^{+\beta }{\displaystyle \frac{x_+^\mu }{\xi ^i}}{\displaystyle \frac{x_+^\nu }{\xi ^j}}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{}{}}l_\beta |_{x_{}\left(\xi \right)}\left({\displaystyle \frac{^2x_{}^\beta }{\xi ^i\xi ^j}}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^\beta {\displaystyle \frac{x_{}^\mu }{\xi ^i}}{\displaystyle \frac{x_{}^\nu }{\xi ^j}}\right),`$ (5)
where $`^+`$ ($`^{}`$) denotes the covariant derivative and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^{+\beta }`$ ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^\beta `$) are the corresponding Christoffel symbols in $`V^+`$ ($`V^{}`$).

In many physically interesting problems the degree of symmetry is high enough so that the conditions (1) and (4) become a system of ordinary differential equations, which simplifies the problem considerably. In general, however, this reduction does not happen and the partial differential system must be considered. As we shall see below, some of these cases can be handled more easily by using a $`2+1`$ decomposition of the matching conditions. This consists in obtaining a set of geometrical conditions on an initial two-dimensional surface and evolution equations determining how this surface must evolve in order to generate the matching hypersurface. This theory will be reported elsewhere when fully developed. For the aim of this paper, only the constraint matching conditions will be necessary. In order to describe them, some notation must be introduced.

The main assumption for the $`2+1`$ decomposition is that the hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ can be foliated by a set of two-dimensional surfaces, which will be denoted by $`\left\{S_\tau \right\}`$ ($`\tau `$ is a parameter identifying the element of the foliation and plays the role of an evolution parameter). Each two-surface in the foliation can be immersed into $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ by using the natural inclusion

$`i_\tau :S_\tau \mathrm{\Omega }.`$

The surface $`S_\tau `$ can then be embedded into $`V^+`$ and $`V^{}`$, respectively, by the maps

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+\mathrm{\Phi }^+i_\tau ,\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}\mathrm{\Phi }^{}i_\tau $$
(6)
which define the two image surfaces $`S_\tau ^+\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+\left(S_\tau \right)`$ and $`S_\tau ^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}\left(S_\tau \right)`$. We will further assume that both $`S_\tau ^+`$ and $`S_\tau ^{}`$ are spacelike everywhere. Let us consider a point $`xS_\tau `$ and define the vector space

$`\left(T_xS_\tau ^+\right)_{}\left\{𝒏T_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+\left(x\right)}^{}V^+;𝒏\left(d\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+\left(T_xS_\tau \right)\right)=0\right\},`$

where $`d\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+`$ is the differential application of the embedding $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+`$, and $`T_yM`$, $`T_y^{}M`$ denote, respectively, the tangent and cotangent spaces of a manifold $`M`$ at any point $`yM`$. The vector space $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^+\right)_{}`$ is simply the set of normal one-forms to the two-surface $`S_\tau ^+`$ in $`V^+`$. Since $`S_\tau ^+`$ is assumed to be spacelike, $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^+\right)_{}`$ is two-dimensional and timelike. The second fundamental form of $`S_\tau ^+`$ along the direction $`𝒏`$ is defined, as usual, as

$`𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^\mathbf{+}\left(𝒏\right)\mathrm{\Phi }_{\tau }^{+}{}_{}{}^{}\left(^+𝒏\right).`$

where $`𝒏`$ is a one-form field orthogonal to $`S_\tau ^+`$ everywhere (the set of all these objects will be denoted by $`\left(TS_\tau ^+\right)_{}`$). Obviously, similar definitions hold by interchanging plus and minus everywhere.

The constraint matching conditions on $`S_\tau `$ are essentially the restrictions of the full set of matching conditions into the two-surface $`S_\tau `$. They can also be splitted into two different sets, one involving first fundamental forms and another involving second fundamental forms. The first one is an immediate consequence of (1) and the definition (6) and demands, quite naturally, the equality of the two first fundamental forms on $`S_\tau `$. Explicitly,

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{\tau }^{+}{}_{}{}^{}\left(g^+\right)=\mathrm{\Phi }_{\tau }^{}{}_{}{}^{}\left(g^{}\right).$$
(7)
The second set of constraint matching conditions is somewhat more involved, although its geometrical contents can be clearly understood. The matching of the two spacetimes, requires, as mentioned above, the identification of the tangent spaces at the points on the matching hypersurfaces. Furthermore, this identification must be done so that the resulting metric tensor is continuous. When working with the foliation $`\{S_\tau \}`$, part of the job is accomplished by identifying the tangent planes to the two surfaces $`S_\tau ^+`$ and $`S_\tau ^{}`$. The remaining identification requires the existence of a linear and isometric application

$$\xi _\tau ^x:\left(T_xS_\tau ^+\right)_{}\left(T_xS_\tau ^{}\right)_{},$$
(8)
which completes the identification of the tangent spaces at the points $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+(x)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}(x)`$. It is not difficult to show that the preliminary and second set of matching conditions can be combined to imply the following condition on $`S_\tau `$

$$𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^\mathbf{+}\left(𝒏\right)=𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{\mathbf{}}\left(\xi _\tau \left(𝒏\right)\right),𝒏\left(TS_\tau ^+\right)_{},$$
(9)
where the field $`\xi _\tau \left(𝒏\right)`$ is defined, naturally, as $`\xi _\tau \left(𝒏\right)|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}(x)}=\xi _\tau ^x\left(𝒏|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+(x)}\right)`$, $`xS_\tau `$. The existence of an isometric application (8) satisfying (9) constitutes the second set of constraint matching conditions. Due to the linearity of $`\xi _\tau ^x`$, and the $``$-linearity of $`𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{\mathbf{}}`$ and $`𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^\mathbf{+}`$ (i.e. $`𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^\mathbf{\pm }(f𝒏)=f𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^\mathbf{\pm }(𝒏)`$ for any scalar function $`f`$), it suffices to impose (9) for two one-form fields $`𝒏_\mathrm{𝟏},𝒏_\mathrm{𝟐}\left(TS_\tau ^+\right)_{}`$ being linearly independent at each point on $`S_\tau ^+`$. Let us now write down the local form of the constraint matching conditions (7) and (9). Introducing local coordinates $`\{\zeta ^A\}`$ ($`A,B,\mathrm{}=1,2`$) in the two-surface $`S_\tau `$, the two embeddings read, locally,

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+:\zeta ^Ax_+^\alpha =x_\tau ^{+\alpha }\left(\zeta \right),\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}:\zeta ^Ax_{}^\alpha =x_\tau ^\alpha \left(\zeta \right),`$

where $`x_\tau ^{+\alpha }\left(\zeta \right)`$ and $`x_\tau ^\alpha \left(\zeta \right)`$ are functions of $`\zeta ^A`$. The condition (7) becomes, obviously,

$$g_{\alpha \beta }^+|_{x_\tau ^+\left(\zeta \right)}\frac{x_\tau ^{+\alpha }}{\zeta ^A}\frac{x_\tau ^{+\alpha }}{\zeta ^B}=g_{\alpha \beta }^{}|_{x_\tau ^{}\left(\zeta \right)}\frac{x_\tau ^\alpha }{\zeta ^A}\frac{x_\tau ^\alpha }{\zeta ^B}.$$
(10)
Regarding (9), we take arbitrary bases, $`𝒏_\mathbf{+}^𝑨|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+(x)}`$ of $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^+\right)_{}`$ and $`𝒏_{\mathbf{}}^𝑨|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}(x)}`$ of $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^{}\right)_{}`$, and define the scalar quantities

$`\gamma _+^{AB}(x)g^+(𝒏_\mathbf{+}^𝑨,𝒏_\mathbf{+}^𝑩)|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+(x)},\gamma _{}^{AB}(x)g^{}(𝒏_{\mathbf{}}^𝑨,𝒏_{\mathbf{}}^𝑩)|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}(x)}.`$

The linear isometric application $`\xi _\tau ^x`$ takes the form

$`\xi _\tau ^x\left(𝒏_\mathbf{+}^𝑨|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^+(x)}\right)=\xi _{\tau }^{}{}_{B}{}^{A}(x)𝒏_{\mathbf{}}^𝑩|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{}(x)},`$

where $`\xi _{\tau }^{}{}_{B}{}^{A}(x)`$ are a set of scalar functions defined on $`S_\tau `$ which must satisfy

$`\xi _{\tau }^{}{}_{B}{}^{A}(x)\xi _{\tau }^{}{}_{D}{}^{C}(x)\gamma _{}^{BD}(x)=\gamma _+^{AC}(x)`$

to ensure that $`\xi _\tau ^x`$ is an isometry. The condition (9) can now be rewritten as

$$\frac{}{}n_{+\beta }^C\left(\frac{^2x_\tau ^{+\beta }}{\zeta ^A\zeta ^B}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^{+\beta }\frac{x_\tau ^{+\mu }}{\zeta ^A}\frac{x_\tau ^{+\nu }}{\zeta ^B}\right)|_{x_\tau ^+\left(\zeta \right)}=\frac{}{}\xi _{\tau }^{}{}_{D}{}^{C}(\zeta )n_\beta ^D\left(\frac{^2x_\tau ^\beta }{\zeta ^A\zeta ^B}+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\mu \nu }^\beta \frac{x_\tau ^\mu }{\zeta ^A}\frac{x_\tau ^\nu }{\zeta ^B}\right)|_{x_\tau ^{}\left(\zeta \right)}.$$
(11)
In the next section, the conditions (10) and (11) will be exploited to restrict the form of the matching hypersurface in the axially symmetric Einstein-Straus model. They will allow for a complete resolution of the matching problem we are considering.

## III Axially symmetric Einstein-Straus model.

Let us now study the main object of this paper, namely the existence of static, axially symmetric regions embedded in a Friedman-Lemaître universe. We choose standard spherical coordinates in the FL cosmology so that the line-element takes the usual form

$$ds_{FL}^2=dt^2+a^2(t)\left[dr^2+\mathrm{\Sigma }^2(r,ϵ)\left(d\theta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi ^2\right)\right],$$
(12)
where $`a(t)`$ is the scale factor of the cosmological model (we do not restrict its form whatsoever a priori) and $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(r,ϵ)`$ is the standard function

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(r,ϵ)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{sinh}r& \text{if }ϵ=1\hfill \\ r& \text{if }ϵ=0\hfill \\ \mathrm{sin}r& \text{if }ϵ=1\hfill \end{array}.$$
(13)
Regarding the static, axially symmetric spacetime, we will make the usual assumption that it is orthogonally transitive (i.e. the two-planes orthogonal to the isometry group orbits are surface-forming). As an important theorem by Kundt and Trümper  shows (generalizing Papapetrou’s theorem for vacuum ), this condition is automatically satisfied for a wide class of energy-momentum tensors including vacuum, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-term (i.e. cosmological constant), perfect fluids and electrovacuum. Thus, the orthogonally transitive assumption does not represent a severe restriction on the kind of regions we are considering. Under this assumption, there exist coordinates in which the line-element in the static region reads

$$ds_{St}^2=F^2\left(x^A\right)dT^2+g_{AB}\left(x^C\right)dx^Adx^B+W^2\left(x^A\right)d\widehat{\varphi }^2,$$
(14)
so that $`_T`$ is the static and $`_{\widehat{\varphi }}`$ is the axial Killing vector. The coordinate transformations keeping the structure of (14) unchanged are

$$T\alpha _1T+\alpha _0,x^Ax^A\left(\stackrel{~}{x}^A\right),\widehat{\varphi }\widehat{\varphi }+c,$$
(15)
where $`\alpha _10`$, $`\alpha _0`$ and $`c`$ are arbitrary constants and $`x^A\left(\stackrel{~}{x}^A\right)`$ are arbitrary functions with non-vanishing Jacobian.

Both FL and static spacetimes admit canonical foliations by spacelike hypersurfaces. In the FL cosmology, this foliation is defined by the homogeneity and isotropy hypersurfaces $`t=\text{const}`$. In the static region, the foliation is given by the hypersurfaces orthogonal to the static Killing vector, $`T=\text{const}`$. Since the physical problem we treat is the existence of static regions living in a cosmological background, we can assume that the matching hypersurfaces are not tangent to any of the hypersurfaces $`t=\text{const.}`$ in the FL spacetime or $`T=\text{const.}`$ in the static spacetime. This case would rather correspond to a phase transition between a static spacetime and an expanding FL cosmology, which is a completely different situation. Consequently, the foliation defined by the cosmic time induces a canonical foliation in the matching hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{FL}`$, defined by $`S_\tau ^{FL}=\mathrm{\Omega }^{FL}\left\{t=\tau \right\}`$. Similarly, the matching hypersurface in the static spacetime $`\mathrm{\Omega }^{St}`$ (the labels $`FL`$ and $`St`$ will replace the scripts plus and minus used in the previous section) can be canonically foliated by the two-surfaces $`S_𝒯^{St}=\mathrm{\Omega }^{St}\left\{T=𝒯\right\}`$. Hence, we have that each region in the glued spacetime has a natural and canonical time function, the cosmic time in the FL background and the static time in the interior region. It is natural from the physical point of view to demand that these two canonical times coincide on the matching hypersurface. Here, we make the second fundamental assumption in this paper, namely, we demand that the global Einstein-Straus spacetime possesses also a canonical time function which coincides with the cosmic time in the FL background and with the static time in the interior region<sup>*</sup><sup>*</sup>*If the interior region possesses a high enough degree of symmetry (e.g. Minkowski spacetime) the static time may be not unique. However, since we did not specify the form of the interior metric (14) a priori, we are not choosing between any of them (whenever there is more than one) and therefore they are all treated on the same footing. In this particular case, the assumption we are making is that there exists at least one static time which matches appropriately with the cosmic time on the matching hypersurface. As we shall see below, the matching problem will fix the interior geometry completely and, therefore, it will choose which of the static times (if there is more than one) is the appropriate one to match with the exterior FL background.. If this assumption were violated, then spacetime events on the boundary of the static region being equally old with respect to the cosmic time, would correspond to different instants of time with respect to the static time, which is an undesirable property for the model we are constructing. Notice that this condition we are imposing is satisfied in both the spherically symmetric Einstein-Straus model and in the static cylindrically symmetric model in . Therefore, the assumption is not only physically plausible but it is also general enough so that a bridge between the two extreme cases is constructed. Hence, analyzing this case will certainly determine whether the spherically symmetric Einstein-Straus model is exceptional or not. It must be emphasized, however, that we are indeed making a simplifying assumption which is not mathematically necessary a priori. It would be interesting analyzing the problem in full generality, although this is probably a much more difficult question.

The condition we are imposing can be translated in mathematical terms by demanding that the two canonical foliations in the matching hypersurface coincide in the glued manifold. In other words, we assume there exists a foliation $`\left\{S_\tau \right\}`$ in the abstract matching hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ such that the two embeddings defining the matching hypersurfaces

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{FL}:\mathrm{\Omega }V^{FL},\mathrm{\Phi }^{St}:\mathrm{\Omega }V^{St},`$

satisfy $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{FL}\left(S_\tau \right)=S_\tau ^{FL}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{St}\left(S_\tau \right)=S_{T(\tau )}^{St}`$ (the geometrical coincidence of the foliation allows for a reparametrisation $`T(\tau )`$).

Regarding the condition that the static region is axially symmetric, this implies not only that the interior metric possesses an axial Killing vector, but also that the two matching hypersurfaces preserve this symmetry. More precisely, they must be invariant under the action of the axial symmetry in each spacetime. Since the two spacelike foliations in $`V^{FL}`$ and $`V^{St}`$ are also axially symmetric, it follows that each two-surface $`S_\tau `$ admits an axial Killing vector field. Choosing coordinates $`\{\lambda ,\phi \}`$ on $`S_\tau `$ adapted to this axial symmetry (i.e. such that the axial Killing reads $`_\phi `$), the most general form for the two embeddings of $`S_\tau `$ into $`V^{FL}`$ and $`V^{St}`$ can be easily seen to be

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}:S_\tau `$ $``$ $`V^{FL}`$ (16)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}:\{\lambda ,\phi \}`$ $``$ $`\left\{t=\tau ,r=r_\tau \left(\lambda \right),\theta =\theta _\tau \left(\lambda \right),\varphi =\phi \right\},`$ (17)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{St}:S_\tau `$ $``$ $`V^{St}`$ (19)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{St}:\{\lambda ,\phi \}`$ $``$ $`\left\{T=T(\tau ),x^A=x_\tau ^A\left(\lambda \right),\widehat{\varphi }=\phi \right\},`$ (20)
where $`r_\tau \left(\lambda \right)`$, $`\theta _\tau \left(\lambda \right)`$, $`x_\tau ^A\left(\lambda \right)`$and $`T(\tau )`$ are unknown functions. Imposing the first constraint matching conditions (7) gives the two relations

$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}W(x^A)|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)}={\displaystyle \frac{}{}}a\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{sin}\theta |_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)},\dot{x}_\tau ^2{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}g_{AB}\dot{x}_\tau ^A\dot{x}_\tau ^B|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)}={\displaystyle \frac{}{}}a^2\left(\dot{r}_\tau ^2+\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\dot{\theta }_\tau ^2\right)|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)},`$

where the dot means derivative with respect to $`\lambda `$. Regarding the second set of conditions (9), we must first identify the normal planes to the two-surface $`S_\tau `$ in each spacetime and then construct the most general linear isometry between them. The vector space $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^{St}\right)_{}`$ is spanned by the two mutually orthogonal one-forms

$$\frac{}{}dT|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{St}(x)},𝜿\frac{}{}|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)}ϵ_{AB}\dot{x}_\tau ^Adx^B|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{St}(x)},$$

where $`ϵ_{AB}`$ is the totally antisymmetric symbol with $`ϵ_{12}=1`$. Similarly, the vector space $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^{FL}\right)_{}`$ is spanned by the two mutually orthogonal one-forms

$`{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}dt|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)},{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}𝜶|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}\dot{\theta }_\tau dr\dot{r}_\tau d\theta |_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}.`$

Thus, the most general linear and isometric application $`\xi _\tau ^x:\left(T_xS_\tau ^{FL}\right)_{}\left(T_xS_\tau ^{St}\right)_{}`$ is given by the linear extension of

$`\xi _\tau ^x\left(dt|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{}{}}\eta _1F\mathrm{cosh}\beta dT+\eta _2\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{G}{\dot{x}_\tau ^2}}}\mathrm{sinh}\beta 𝜿|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)},`$
$`\xi _\tau ^x\left({\displaystyle \frac{a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sqrt{\dot{y}_\tau ^2}}}𝜶|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)={\displaystyle \frac{}{}}\eta _1F\mathrm{sinh}\beta dT+\eta _2\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{G}{\dot{x}_\tau ^2}}}\mathrm{cosh}\beta 𝜿|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)},`$
where $`\beta (\lambda ,\varphi )`$ is an arbitrary function, $`\eta _1`$ and $`\eta _2`$ are arbitrary signs and we have defined $`\dot{y}_\tau ^2a^2\left(\dot{r}_\tau ^2+\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\dot{\theta }_\tau ^2\right)|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}`$ and $`Gdet\left(g_{AB}\right)`$. A consequence of the staticity of the interior region is that $`𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑺𝒕}\left(dT|_{\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)=0`$. Consequently, the second set of matching conditions (9) becomes

$`\begin{array}{cc}\hfill 𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑭𝑳}\left(dt|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)=\eta _2\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{G}{\dot{x}_\tau ^2}}}\mathrm{sinh}\beta 𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑺𝒕}\left(𝜿|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)}\right)& \\ & \\ \hfill {\displaystyle \frac{a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sqrt{\dot{y}_\tau ^2}}}𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑭𝑳}\left(𝜶|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)=\eta _2\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{G}{\dot{x}_\tau ^2}}}\mathrm{cosh}\beta 𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑺𝒕}\left(𝜿|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)}\right)& \end{array}\}`$
which implies

$$𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑭𝑳}\left(dt|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)=\frac{a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }}{\sqrt{\dot{y}_\tau ^2}}\mathrm{tanh}\beta 𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑭𝑳}\left(𝜶|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right).$$
(22)
This equation involves only objects from the FL background metric. A trivial calculation shows that $`𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑭𝑳}\left(dt|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)`$ and $`𝑲_{𝑺_𝝉}^{𝑭𝑳}\left(𝜶|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)`$ are both diagonal and therefore (22) implies two conditions. Combining them so that the hyperbolic angle $`\beta `$ disappears, we obtain the equation

$$\dot{\theta }_\tau \ddot{r}_\tau +\dot{r}_\tau \ddot{\theta }_\tau +\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\dot{r}_{\tau }^{}{}_{}{}^{2}\dot{\theta }_\tau +\left(\frac{\dot{r}_\tau ^2}{\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}+\dot{\theta }_\tau ^2\right)\frac{\mathrm{cos}\theta }{\mathrm{sin}\theta }\dot{r}_\tau |_{S_\tau ^{FL}}=0,$$
(23)
where we have dropped a global factor $`a_{,t}`$ (comma means, as usual, partial derivative) which is non-zero because the cosmological model is assumed to be expanding (our aim is precisely analyzing the possible effect of the cosmological expansion in the local physics). (23) is an ordinary differential equation which defines the possible shapes of $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$. It can be explicitly solved to give

$$\frac{}{}\mathrm{\Sigma }(r,ϵ)|_{r=r_\tau \left(\lambda \right)}=\frac{2\sigma _1\left(\sigma _0\mathrm{cos}\theta +\sqrt{1\sigma _0^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }\right)}{\left(\sigma _0\mathrm{cos}\theta +\sqrt{1\sigma _0^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }\right)^2+ϵ\sigma _1^2}|_{\theta =\theta _\tau \left(\lambda \right)},$$
(24)
where $`\sigma _1`$ and $`\sigma _0`$ are arbitrary integration constants (the particular solution $`\theta =\pi /2`$ can be obtained from this expression by putting $`\sigma _0=1`$ and $`\sigma _1=0`$ and following an appropriate limiting procedure). In order to identify this surface, let us analyze its intrinsic geometry. Using the defining relation (24) it is not difficult to obtain the first fundamental form in $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$, which reads

$`ds_{S_\tau ^{FL}}^2={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}{1\sigma _0^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta }}d\theta ^2+\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi ^2|_{r=r_\tau \left(\theta \right)}.`$

Evaluating the curvature scalar $`R_{S_\tau ^{FL}}`$ for this metric we find

$$R_{S_\tau ^{FL}}=\frac{\left[\left(1+\sigma _0\right)^2+ϵ\sigma _1^2\right]\left[\left(1\sigma _0\right)^2+ϵ\sigma _1^2\right]}{2\sigma _1^2},$$
(25)
which is constant throughout $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$. Thus, this two-surface is maximally symmetric and hence  it is either a two-sphere, a two-plane or a hyperbolic plane depending on whether the sign of $`R_{S_\tau ^{FL}}`$ is positive, zero or negative, respectively. Due to (25), it follows that in a closed FL spacetime ($`ϵ=1`$) the matching two-surface $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$ must be a two-sphere, in a flat FL cosmology ($`ϵ=0`$) both two-spheres and two-planes are possible and in an open FL cosmology ($`ϵ=1`$) the three possibilities above are, in principle, allowed. The physical problem we are investigating is the existence of axially symmetric regions immersed in a Friedman-Lemaître background. When the surfaces $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$ are two-planes or hyperbolic planes, the static regions are spatially unbounded (they extend to the spatial infinity in the FL cosmology) and the only possible construction for having a static region in a FL background would be performing a double matching, so that the static region is “sandwiched” between two FL spacetimes (i.e. the static region would have finite width but would be unbounded in the other two spatial directions). Even in that case, the static region cannot be prevented to disconnect the FL background. Thus, these two cases are not physically interesting for the problem we are considering in this paper. Consequently, we will restrict the analysis to the case in which $`\{S_\tau ^{FL}\}`$ are two-spheres (i.e (25) is always positive).

Let us now locate these two-spheres within the FL spacetime. To that end, we take advantage of the high degree of symmetry in the cosmological background. The uniparametric group of transformations generated by the Killing vector

$$\stackrel{}{k}=\mathrm{cos}\theta _r\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}\mathrm{sin}\theta _\theta $$
(26)
is the most general translational isometry leaving the symmetry axis of $`_\varphi `$ invariant. Let us use the natural parametrization (which will be denoted by $`\gamma `$) induced by (26) in this group of transformations. It is not difficult to show that the transformation $`\gamma =\gamma _0`$, where $`\gamma _0`$ is given by

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }(\gamma _0,ϵ)={\displaystyle \frac{2\sigma _1\sigma _0}{\sqrt{\left[\left(1+\sigma _0\right)^2+ϵ\sigma _1^2\right]\left[\left(1\sigma _0\right)^2+ϵ\sigma _1^2\right]}}},`$

transforms the surface (24) into the two-sphere $`r=r_0`$, with $`r_0`$ given by

$`\mathrm{\Sigma }(r_0,ϵ)={\displaystyle \frac{2\sigma _1}{\sqrt{\left[\left(1+\sigma _0\right)^2+ϵ\sigma _1^2\right]\left[\left(1\sigma _0\right)^2+ϵ\sigma _1^2\right]}}}.`$

Thus, the matching hypersurface in the FL cosmology can be, at most, a two-sphere moving arbitrarily along the axis of symmetry and with a radius which can change freely as time evolves. At this stage, the result in  stating that no cylindrically symmetric Einstein-Straus models can exist, has been recovered and generalized. In those models the matching hypersurface consists of a collection of cylinders with arbitrarily varying radius. The results above show that any model in which the matching hypersurface at any instant of cosmic time is not a two-sphere, a two-plane or a hyperbolic plane is impossible.

In order to complete the matching procedure, it is convenient to introduce new coordinate systems in the FL and static spacetimes so that the form of the matching hypersurfaces becomes simpler. To that end, we choose spherical coordinates on each hypersurface $`t=\tau `$ in the FL spacetime so that the two-sphere $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$ is centred at the origin. Completing these coordinates with the global time $`t`$, we obtain a well-defined system of coordinates. In order to obtain the line-element in the new coordinate system, we first change the original coordinates (12) into cylindrical coordinates $`\{t,\rho ,z,\varphi \}`$ by the standard transformation

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(\rho ,ϵ)=\mathrm{\Sigma }(r,ϵ)\mathrm{sin}\theta ,\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }(z,ϵ)}{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,z}(z,ϵ)}=\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }(r,ϵ)}{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}(r,ϵ)}\mathrm{cos}\theta .$$
(27)
($`t`$ and $`\varphi `$ remain unchanged). In cylindrical coordinates, the Killing vector (26) reads simply $`\stackrel{}{k}=_z`$ and the corresponding uniparametric group of transformations takes the trivial form

$$tt,\rho \rho ,zz+\gamma _0(t),\varphi \varphi ,$$
(28)
where $`\gamma _0`$ is allowed to change in time because the centre of the two-sphere $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$ can move along the symmetry axis. Applying (28) and then transforming back into spherical coordinates by using (27), we obtain the line-element

$`ds_{FL}^2=dt^2+a^2\left(t\right)[({\displaystyle \frac{}{}}dr+f(t)\mathrm{cos}\theta dt)^2+({\displaystyle \frac{}{}}\mathrm{\Sigma }(r,ϵ)d\theta f(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}(r,ϵ)\mathrm{sin}\theta dt)^2`$ (29)
$`+\mathrm{\Sigma }^2(r,ϵ)\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\varphi ^2{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}].`$ (30)
where $`f(t)\gamma _0(t)_{,t}`$ denotes the motion of the centre of the two-sphere along the symmetry axis and, for notational simplicity, the same symbols $`\{t,r,\theta ,\varphi \}`$ are used to name the new coordinates (which will be used from now on). The embedding defining the matching surface takes now the very simple form

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{FL}:\mathrm{\Omega }`$ $``$ $`V^{FL}`$ (31)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{FL}:\{\tau ,\vartheta ,\phi \}`$ $``$ $`\left\{t=\tau ,r=r\left(\tau \right),\theta =\vartheta ,\varphi =\phi \right\},`$ (32)
and the embedding $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{FL}:S_\tau V^{FL}`$ is obtained simply by fixing $`\tau =\text{const.}`$ above.

A convenient coordinate system in the static region can be constructed as follows. Due to the staticity of the spacetime, the integral lines of the static Killing $`_T`$ define a canonical diffeomorphism between different constant time hypersurfaces . Thus, there exists a natural projection

$`\mathrm{\Pi }:V^{St}\mathrm{\Xi },`$

where $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ is the quotient space of $`V^{St}`$ defined by the orbits of the static Killing vector (it is, therefore, diffeomorphic to any of the hypersurfaces $`\left\{T=\text{const.}\right\}`$). Finding a coordinate system in an open subset $`𝒰\mathrm{\Xi }`$ amounts to finding a coordinate system in the four-dimensional open set $`\mathrm{\Pi }^1\left(𝒰\right)`$ because the static time $`T`$ can be used as the fourth coordinate. Let us now consider the projection along $`\mathrm{\Pi }`$ of the two-spheres $`\{S_\tau ^{St}\}`$. Since $`S_\tau ^{St}`$ is completely contained in the hypersurface $`\{T=T(\tau )\}`$ it follows that $`S_\tau ^{St}`$ is isometric to $`\mathrm{\Pi }\left(S_\tau ^{St}\right)`$ which, consequently, must be a two-sphere in $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$. Furthermore, $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ is axially symmetric (because of the axial symmetry of $`V^{St}`$) and each $`\mathrm{\Pi }\left(S_\tau ^{St}\right)`$ is centred on the symmetry axis of $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ (this follows from the fact that $`\{S_\tau ^{St}\}`$ are invariant under the action of the axial symmetry in $`V^{St}`$). Defining the subset of $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$

$`𝒲={\displaystyle \underset{\tau J}{}}\mathrm{\Pi }\left(S_\tau ^{St}\right),`$

where $`J`$ is the interval of variation of the parameter $`\tau `$, it is clear that either $`𝒲`$ is also a two-sphere or $`𝒲`$ has a non-empty interior. The first situation is marginal and it only happens when all the two-spheres $`\{S_\tau ^{St}\}`$ are projected to each other by the integral curves of $`_T`$. Consequently, they must all have the same radius, which translates into $`\mathrm{\Sigma }(r(\tau ))a(\tau )=\text{const.}`$ in the FL background. This fixes $`r(\tau )`$ once the scale factor is given. Furthermore, a trivial calculation shows that the matching conditions (1) imply $`f0`$. Thus, the matching hypersurface in the FL spacetime is completely fixed and must be a two-sphere of constant geometrical radius with its centre being at rest with respect to the cosmological flow. Hence, the shape of the static cavity must be spherically symmetric in this case.

In the generic situation, the set of matching two-spheres $`\{S_\tau ^{St}\}`$ are not all projected to each other by the integral curves of $`_T`$ and, hence, $`𝒲`$ has a non-empty interior $`\stackrel{o}{𝒲}`$. At any point $`p\stackrel{o}{𝒲}`$ there exists an open neighbourhood $`U_p\stackrel{o}{𝒲}`$ and a sufficiently small open subinterval $`I_pJ`$ such that the set of two-spheres $`\left\{\mathrm{\Pi }\left(S_\tau ^{St}\right),\tau I_p\right\}`$ foliates $`U_p`$. In other words, for any point $`qU_p`$ there exists a single value of $`\tau _qI_p`$ such that $`q`$ belongs to $`\mathrm{\Pi }\left(S_{\tau _q}^{St}\right)`$. A coordinate system in $`U_p`$ can now be constructed as follows. First, choose the natural angular coordinates $`\{\theta ,\widehat{\varphi }\}`$ on each two-sphere $`\mathrm{\Pi }\left(S_\tau ^{St}\right)`$ such that $`\theta =0`$ and $`\theta =\pi `$ correspond to the axial symmetry axis of $`\mathrm{\Xi }`$ (this choice is possible because each two-sphere $`S_\tau ^{St}`$ is centred with respect to the axis of symmetry in $`V^{St}`$). The third coordinate necessary to identify any point $`qU_p\mathrm{\Xi }`$ can be chosen as the unique value $`\tau _qI_p`$ identifying the two-sphere passing through $`q`$. In this way, a coordinate system around any point $`p\stackrel{o}{𝒲}`$ is constructed. This coordinate system cannot, in general, cover the whole set $`\stackrel{o}{𝒲}`$ (because two different two-spheres with arbitrarily close values of $`\tau `$ may intersect). Due to the purely local character of the matching conditions, this is not an obstacle to proceed with the matching. In order to simplify the matching equations and the final form of the interior static metric obtained below, it turns out to be convenient to use the symbol $`t`$ to denote the coordinate identifying the two-sphere passing through any point $`qU_p`$. This coordinate is spacelike by construction and it has nothing to do with the cosmic time in the FL background so that they should not be confused. The meaning of $`t`$ should become clear from the context. The reason why the same symbol is used for such different objects is that both take the same value at every point on the matching hypersurface, which allows for an important simplification in the writing of the expressions below.

The line-element for the static spacetime in the coordinate system just constructed takes the form

$$ds_{St}^2=F^2(t,\theta )dT^2+Q^2(t,\theta )dt^2+\widehat{r}^2\left(t\right)\left[\left(\frac{}{}d\theta +H(t,\theta )dt\right)^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\widehat{\varphi }^2\right],$$
(33)
which is the most general metric for a static, axially symmetric and orthogonally transitive spacetime such that the two-surfaces $`T=\text{const}`$, $`t=\text{const.}`$ are two-spheres.

The embedding of the matching hypersurface $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ into $`V^{St}`$ takes now the simple form

$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{St}:\mathrm{\Omega }`$ $``$ $`V^{St}`$ (34)
$`\mathrm{\Phi }^{St}:\{\tau ,\vartheta ,\phi \}`$ $``$ $`\left\{T=T(\tau ),t=\tau ,\theta =\vartheta ,\widehat{\varphi }=\phi \right\}`$ (35)
and the corresponding embeddings $`\mathrm{\Phi }_\tau ^{St}:S_\tau V^{St}`$ are obtained by fixing $`\tau =\text{const.}`$

We are now in a favourable position to complete the matching problem. We already made use of the constraint conditions (7) and (9) in order to restrict the form of $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$. However, not all their information has been extracted yet. The equality of the two first fundamental forms on $`S_\tau `$ gives now the single relation

$$\widehat{r}\left(t\right)=a(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }(r,ϵ)\frac{}{}|_{r=r(t)}.$$
(36)
The vector spaces $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^{FL}\right)_{}`$ and $`\left(T_xS_\tau ^{St}\right)_{}`$ are

$`\left(T_xS_\tau ^{FL}\right)_{}=dt|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)},dr|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)},\left(T_xS_\tau ^{St}\right)_{}=dT|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)},dt|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)}`$

and the most general linear isometry $`\xi _\tau ^x`$ between them is the linear extension of

$`\xi _\tau ^x\left(dt|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)=\eta _1\mathrm{cosh}\beta FdT+\eta _2\mathrm{sinh}\beta Qdt{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)},`$ (37)
$`\xi _\tau ^x\left(dr|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{FL}(x)}\right)=\eta _1F\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{sinh}\beta }{a}}f\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{cosh}\beta \right)dT+`$ (38)
$`+\eta _2Q\left({\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cosh}\beta }{a}}{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}f\mathrm{cos}\theta \mathrm{sinh}\beta \right)dt{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}|_{\mathrm{\Psi }_\tau ^{St}(x)}.`$ (39)
A straightforward calculation shows that (9) are equivalent to the three equations

$`\mathrm{sin}\theta H_{,\theta }\mathrm{cos}\theta H|_{S_\tau }=0,`$
$`\eta _2\widehat{r}\mathrm{sinh}\beta \left(H\widehat{r}\mathrm{cos}\theta \widehat{r}_{,t}\mathrm{sin}\theta \right)Q\mathrm{\Sigma }^2aa_{,t}\mathrm{sin}\theta |_{S_\tau }=0,`$
$`\mathrm{\Sigma }a_{,t}\mathrm{cosh}\beta +\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\mathrm{sinh}\beta |_{S_\tau }=0,`$
which can be trivially solved to give

$`H(t,\theta )=L\left(t\right)\mathrm{sin}\theta ,Q(t,\theta )={\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{r}_{,t}L\widehat{r}\mathrm{cos}\theta }{\eta _2\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2a_{,t}^2}}}|_{r=r(t)},`$ (40)
$`\mathrm{sinh}\beta ={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }a_{,t}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2a_{,t}^2}}}|_{r=r(t)},\mathrm{cosh}\beta ={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2a_{,t}^2}}}|_{r=r(t)},`$ (41)
where $`L(t)`$ is an arbitrary function. Thus, the $`\theta `$ dependence of the two metric coefficients $`Q`$ and $`H`$ in (33) is completely fixed. These expressions show that a necessary condition for the existence of the matching is

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2a_{,t}^2\frac{}{}|_{r=r(t)}>0.$$
(42)
This inequality can be geometrically interpreted by noticing that the two-sphere $`S_t^{FL}`$ is non-trapped (see e.g.  for a definition) if and only if (42) is fulfilled. Thus, it follows that a trapped (or marginally trapped) surface cannot be the boundary of an axially symmetric static region, which is an intuitively clear result. Using the expression (57) below for the cosmic energy-density $`\rho ^{FL}`$, the inequality (42) can be rewritten as

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }(r(t),ϵ)<\frac{1}{a(t)}\sqrt{\frac{3}{\rho ^{FL}(t)}}.$$
(43)
Therefore, the radius of the static region must be smaller than some maximum radius. In particular, this forbids situations in which the radius of the two-sphere $`S_\tau ^{FL}`$ grows unboundedly until reaching infinity (so that, in fact, it becomes a two-plane). Hence, if the matching hypersurface is a two-sphere at any instant of time, it must remain a two-sphere for ever (of course, this two-sphere can become a point and then disappear).

Having exhausted the constraint matching conditions, we must now consider the more complicated set of conditions (1) and (4). The task is, however, much simpler now because of all the information we already know. The equality of the two first fundamental forms on $`\mathrm{\Omega }`$ provides

$$L=\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}|_{r=r(t)}f(t),FT_{,t}=\frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}}|_{r=r(t)}.$$
(44)
which fixes the $`\theta `$ dependence of the remaining metric coefficient $`F`$ in the static spacetime. Using (36), (40) and (44), the static line-element can be rewritten in the form

$`ds_{St}^2={\displaystyle \frac{\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]^2}{T_{,t}^2\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\right)}}dT^2+{\displaystyle \frac{\left[a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }+a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]^2}{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}}dt^2+`$ (45)
$`+a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\left(d\theta {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}f\mathrm{sin}\theta dt\right)^2+a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\widehat{\varphi }^2|_{r=r\left(t\right)},`$ (46)
which is completely given in terms of cosmological quantities, except for the function $`T(t)`$ (which fixes the form of the matching hypersurface as seen from the static region). In order to impose the second set of matching conditions we choose the rigging

$`\stackrel{}{l}_{FL}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{a}}_r`$
$`𝒍_{𝑭𝑳}{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}|_{\mathrm{\Omega }^{FL}}=a\left(f\mathrm{cos}\theta dt+dr{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}\right)|_{\mathrm{\Omega }^{FL}},𝒍_{𝑺𝒕}{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}|_{\mathrm{\Omega }^{St}}={\displaystyle \frac{}{}}\eta _1F\mathrm{sinh}\beta dT+\eta _2Q\mathrm{cosh}\beta dt|_{\mathrm{\Omega }^{St}},`$
where the one-form $`𝒍_{𝑺𝒕}`$ has been obtained from $`𝒍_{𝑭𝑳}`$ by applying the linear isometry (38). Evaluating (4) involves now a rather long calculation which was performed with the aid of the computer algebra program REDUCE . Only the $`(\tau ,\tau )`$ component is not identically satisfied and it provides two conditions. Whenever $`f`$ is not identically vanishing these two equations can be rewritten as

$`T_{,tt}f=T_{,t}\left[f_{,t}+2f{\displaystyle \frac{a_{,tt}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2+a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}r_{,t}\left(ϵ+a_{,t}^2\right)}{a_{,t}\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\right)}}|_{r=r(t)}\right],`$ (47)
$`\left(aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\right)a_{,t}f_{,t}+aa_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}f^3+`$ (48)
$`+\left[aa_{,t}^2\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,tt}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}r_{,t}^2\right)+2\left(a_{,tt}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+ϵa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}\right)\right]f|_{r=r(t)}=0.`$ (49)
The case $`f0`$ can be obtained from these equations by substituting $`f_{,t}`$ from (49) into (47), then dropping a global factor $`f`$ and finally putting $`f=0`$. Only one equation survives in that particular case.

The expressions (47) and (49) are differential equations for $`T(t)`$ and $`f(t)`$. Thus, they determine the form of the matching hypersurface in the static spacetime and the motion of the centre of the two spheres $`\{S_t^{FL}\}`$ along the axis of symmetry in the FL spacetime. Both equations can be explicitly integrated once the scale factor $`a(t)`$ and the evolution $`r(t)`$ of the radius of the two-spheres $`\{S_t^{FL}\}`$ are given. In order to solve (49) two different cases must be considered. In the particular case

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}|_{r=r(t)}0,$$
(50)
the equation becomes algebraic and its solution is (the other solution $`f0`$ is impossible due to (44))

$`f^2(t)={\displaystyle \frac{a_{,t}^2+ϵaa_{,tt}}{a^2a_{,t}^2}}={\displaystyle \frac{\left(\rho +p\right)^{FL}}{2a_{,t}^2}},`$

where the last equality follows from the standard expressions for the energy-density and pressure in the FL spacetime in terms of the scale factor (see (57) below).

In the generic case, (50) does not hold and (49) is a Bernouilli differential equation which can integrated  in terms of quadratures as

$$f(t)=\frac{\alpha e^{{\scriptscriptstyle f_1𝑑t}}}{\sqrt{12\alpha ^2\frac{}{}f_2e^{2{\scriptscriptstyle f_1𝑑t}}𝑑t}},$$
(51)
where $`\alpha `$ is an arbitrary constant and $`f_1(t)`$, $`f_2(t)`$ are defined as

$`f_1(t){\displaystyle \frac{aa_{,t}^2\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,tt}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}r_{,t}^2\right)2\left(a_{,tt}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+ϵa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}\right)}{a_{,t}\left(aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\right)}}|_{r=r(t)},f_2(t){\displaystyle \frac{aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}}|_{r=r(t)}.`$

Regarding (47), this is a linear differential equation for $`T_{,t}`$ which is therefore trivial to integrate. The structure of its general solution is $`T(t)=\alpha _1T_0(t)+\alpha _0`$, where $`T_0(t)`$ is any particular solution and $`\alpha _0`$, $`\alpha _1`$ are integration constants. These constants are irrelevant as the form of the matching hypersurface remains unaffected if they change. They simply correspond to the freedom (15) in defining the global static time in any static spacetime. Thus, $`\alpha _0`$ and $`\alpha _1`$ can be fixed arbitrarily without loss of generality.

Thus, we conclude that the matching of a Friedman-Lemaître spacetime with an axially symmetric static region allows for an arbitrary scale factor in the FL spacetime and for an arbitrary function $`r(t)`$ describing the evolution of the radius of the matching two-spheres (as long as the inequality (43) is fulfilled). Then, the matching conditions fix the motion of the centre of the two-spheres along the axis of symmetry through (51). They also fix uniquely the form of the matching hypersurface in the interior static region and  the full geometry of the static spacetime (in an open region around the matching hypersurface), which is given by the line-element (46). In the next section, the geometry of the interior static geometry will be analyzed.

## IV Geometry of the static spacetime.

Let us first of all discuss the domain of applicability of the coordinate system $`\{T,t,\theta ,\widehat{\varphi }\}`$ in the static spacetime. As remarked in the previous section, these coordinates are well-defined at least in a sufficiently small open neighbourhood around any point in the interior of $`\mathrm{\Pi }^1(\mathrm{\Pi }(\mathrm{\Omega }^{St}))`$. A priori, there is no reason to expect this coordinate system to cover the whole open set $`\mathrm{\Pi }^1(\stackrel{o}{𝒲})`$. However, this turns out to be the case and a single coordinate patch can be used to describe all the relevant interior region. Before showing this explicitly, it is worth pointing out that the form of the interior static metric at points not belonging to $`\mathrm{\Pi }^1(\stackrel{o}{𝒲})`$ can not be determined at all by the matching conditions. This is because the matching procedure is purely local and there is no way of relating points outside this open set with the matching hypersurface. Determining the interior metric at those points requires further information like analyticity conditions or the Einstein field equations for some type of energy-momentum contents. Thus, all the discussion below concerning the geometry of the static region is restricted to $`\mathrm{\Pi }^1(\stackrel{o}{𝒲})`$.

In order to see explicitly that $`\{T,t,\theta ,\widehat{\varphi }\}`$ is a valid coordinate system everywhere, we must show that no coordinate singularities are present in the line-element (46) or, equivalently, we must proof that any possible coordinate singularity is, in fact, an essential singularity. The metric (46) becomes singular at any point satisfying

$$\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)=0\text{or}a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }+a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)=0.$$
(52)
The remaining possibilities, like $`T_{,t}=0`$ or $`f+\mathrm{}`$, have clear implications for the matching hypersurface as seen from the FL spacetime (where the coordinates have a transparent meaning) and can be discarded as unphysical for the problem we are considering. In order to show that points satisfying (52) are essential singularities, let us write down the energy-momentum tensor of the static spacetime. Using the orthonormal tetrad

$`𝜽^\mathrm{𝟎}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)}{T_{,t}\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}}}dT|_{r=r\left(t\right)},𝜽^\mathrm{𝟏}={\displaystyle \frac{a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }+a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}}}dt|_{r=r\left(t\right)},`$ (53)
$`𝜽^\mathrm{𝟐}=a\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(d\theta {\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{\mathrm{\Sigma }}}f\mathrm{sin}\theta dt\right)|_{r=r\left(t\right)},𝜽^\mathrm{𝟑}=a\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{sin}\theta d\widehat{\varphi }|_{r=r\left(t\right)}`$ (54)
to evaluate all tensor components, it turns out that the energy-momentum tensor is diagonal and with the structure $`(T_{\alpha \beta })=\text{diag}(\rho ,p_r,p_T,p_T)`$, where $`\rho `$ stands for the energy-density, $`p_r`$ is the radial pressure and $`p_T`$ the tangential pressure. We borrow the terms radial and tangential pressure from the spherically symmetric case even though the static metric does not possess this exact symmetry in general. However, the static metric is nearly spherically symmetric (its departure being governed by the single function $`f`$) since at every point we have a two-sphere passing through it. The structure of the energy-momentum tensor is exactly the same as in the exact spherically symmetric case. This resemblance goes even further because the evaluation of the Weyl spinor in the null tetrad associated canonically with (53) shows that $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$ is the only non-vanishing component, exactly as in the spherically symmetric case. Thus, the static spacetime is algebraically special of Petrov type D (or conformally flat when $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$=0).

The explicit expressions for $`\rho `$ and $`p_r`$ can be read from the expressions

$`\rho ={\displaystyle \frac{3a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(a_{,t}^2+ϵ\right)\left(f\mathrm{cos}\theta +r_{,t}\right)+a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(2aa_{,tt}+a_{,t}^2+ϵ\right)}{a^2\left[a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }+a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]}}|_{r=r\left(t\right)},`$ (55)
$`\rho +p_r={\displaystyle \frac{a\left(\rho +p\right)^{FL}\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\right)\left(f\mathrm{cos}\theta +r_{,t}\right)}{\left[a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }+a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]}}|_{r=r\left(t\right)},`$ (56)
where $`\rho ^{FL}`$ and $`p^{FL}`$ stand for the cosmic energy-density and pressure in terms of the scale factor

$$\rho ^{FL}=\frac{3\left(a_{,t}^2+ϵ\right)}{a^2},p^{FL}=\frac{2aa_{,tt}a_{,t}^2ϵ}{a^2}.$$
(57)
Regarding $`p_T`$, its expression takes different forms depending on whether $`aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}0`$ or not. In the first case we obtain

$`\rho +p_T={\displaystyle \frac{\left(\rho +p\right)_{,t}^{FL}a\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+2\left(\rho +p\right)^{FL}a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)}{2\left[a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }+a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]}}+(\rho +p)^{FL}\mathrm{\Sigma }\times `$ (58)
$`\times {\displaystyle \frac{a\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}r_{,t}\left(3a_{,t}^22aa_{,tt}\right)+a_{,t}\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2\left(3+a^2f^2\right)a^2\left(1+ϵ\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\right)r_{,t}^2a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}r_{,tt}\right]}{2\left[a_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }+a\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\left(r_{,t}+f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)\right]\left[\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}\right]}}|_{r=r\left(t\right)}`$ (59)
and in the second case ($`aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }r_{,t}+\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}0`$), the corresponding expression reads

$`\rho +p_T={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }f\mathrm{cos}\theta \left(a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2+aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}f\mathrm{cos}\theta \right)}}({\displaystyle \frac{}{}}aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}(\rho +p)_{,t}^{FL}+`$
$`+2(\rho +p)^{FL}\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}[2aa_{,t}\mathrm{\Sigma }\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}f\mathrm{cos}\theta +\mathrm{\Sigma }^2(3a_{,t}^2+4ϵaa_{,tt})2]{\displaystyle \frac{}{}}\left)\right|_{r=r(t)}.`$
Since the scalar quantities $`\rho `$, $`p_r`$ and $`p_T`$ have a clear physical meaning, any divergence in them corresponds to a true singularity in the static metric. It is now clear that at any point satisfying (52) we have divergences in $`\rho `$ and/or $`p_r`$ and, therefore, we have a matter singularity rather than just a bad coordinate description. This type of singularities leads to physically unrealistic models and should, therefore, be discarded (notice that these singularities are “touched” by the matching hypersurface and cannot be interpreted as singular “sources” for the static metric, like in the Schwarzschild spacetime)

The expressions for $`\rho `$, $`p_r`$ and $`p_T`$ above allow also for obtaining a number of interesting conclusions. When the FL spacetime is de Sitter (or anti-de Sitter) then $`(\rho +p)^{FL}=0`$ and the energy-momentum tensor in the static spacetime becomes $`T_{\alpha \beta }=\mathrm{\Lambda }g_{\alpha \beta }^{St}`$ (with the same value for $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ as the cosmic background). Furthermore, the static spacetime can be easily seen to be conformally flat and therefore it must necessarily be de Sitter (anti-de Sitter) . Thus, the following result holds

###### Proposition 1

Any static and axially symmetric spatially compact region in a de Sitter background must have the same geometry as the exterior manifold.

In other words, de Sitter (anti-de Sitter) spacetimes do not admit non-trivial static and axially symmetric spatially compact regions. Thus, we can assume from now on that that the FL spacetime is not de Sitter or anti-de Sitter, i.e. $`\left(\rho +p\right)^{FL}0`$.

If the static region is imposed to have an energy-momentum tensor with $`\rho +p_r=0`$ (this includes the important subcases of vacuum, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-term and non-null Einstein-Maxwell solutions, see below), then (56) immediately implies $`f=0`$ and $`r_{,t}=0`$ ($`r(t)=r_0`$). Thus, the matching hypersurface must be a two-sphere comoving with the cosmological flow. Conversely, if the matching two-sphere is comoving with the cosmological flow ($`f=0`$ , $`r(t)=r_0`$), then (56) implies $`\rho +p_r=0`$, which shows the equivalence of the two conditions. In this situation, the differential equation for $`T_{,tt}`$ (47) can be integrated to give

$`T_{,t}={\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}}{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}}|_{r=r_0}`$

(the integration constants are irrelevant, as discussed above) so that the line-element in the static region becomes

$$ds^2=\left(\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\right)dT^2+\frac{a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}{\mathrm{\Sigma }_{,r}^2a_{,t}^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2}dt^2+a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^2\left(d\theta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\widehat{\varphi }^2\right)|_{r=r_0},$$
(60)
which is obviously spherically symmetric. Performing the coordinate change

$`a(t)\mathrm{\Sigma }(r_0)=\stackrel{ˇ}{r}`$

and defining the standard mass function $`m(\stackrel{ˇ}{r})`$  as

$`a_{,t}^2=ϵ+{\displaystyle \frac{2m\left(a\mathrm{\Sigma }\right)}{a\mathrm{\Sigma }^3}},`$

the line element (60) transforms into

$$ds^2=\left(1\frac{2m(\stackrel{ˇ}{r})}{\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}\right)dT^2+\frac{d\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^2}{1\frac{2m(\stackrel{ˇ}{r})}{\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}}+\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^2\left(d\theta ^2+\mathrm{sin}^2\theta d\widehat{\varphi }^2\right).$$
(61)
It is interesting to notice that this line-element is the most general static and spherically symmetric metric with $`\rho +p_r=0`$. Thus, all these metrics can be matched with an appropriate exterior FL spacetime through a spherically symmetric matching hypersurface. The energy-momentum contents and the only non-zero Weyl spinor coefficient, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_2`$, of this spacetime read

$$\rho =p_r=\frac{2m_{,\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}}{\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^2},p_T=\frac{m_{,\stackrel{ˇ}{r}\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}}{\stackrel{ˇ}{r}},\mathrm{\Psi }_2=\frac{m_{,\stackrel{ˇ}{r}\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}}{6\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}+\frac{2m_{,\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}}{3\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^2}\frac{m}{\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^3},$$
(62)
while the energy-density and pressure in the FL cosmology are

$`\rho ^{FL}={\displaystyle \frac{6m}{\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^3}},p^{FL}={\displaystyle \frac{2m_{,\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}}{\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^2}}.`$

Thus, we can conclude

###### Proposition 2

The matching between a static and axially symmetric spacetime and a Friedman-Lemaître cosmology across a hypersurface described by a two-sphere comoving with the cosmological flow must have a spherically symmetric interior with metric given by (61) where $`m(\stackrel{ˇ}{r})`$ is an arbitrary function describing the total mass contained in the static region.

Since vacuum and $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-term spacetimes are particular cases of $`\rho +p_r=0`$, the two following results hold

###### Corollary 1

The only $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-term static and axially symmetric spatially compact region within a FL spacetime must be a two-sphere comoving with the cosmological flow and interior geometry given by (61) with $`m=m_0+\frac{\rho _0\stackrel{ˇ}{r}^3}{6}`$ ($`m_0`$ and $`\rho _0`$ constants).

###### Corollary 2

The only static and axially symmetric, spatially compact, vacuum region in a Friedman-Lemaître spacetime must be a two-sphere comoving with the cosmological flow and with Schwarzschild interior geometry (the Einstein-Straus model)

Let us next discuss Einstein-Maxwell spacetimes, i.e. spacetimes with an energy-momentum tensor corresponding to an electromagnetic field outside any mass and charge sources. Static spacetimes with a pure null electromagnetic source are impossible , so we are left with the non-null case. In this case (and due to the diagonal form of the energy-momentum tensor) the so-called Rainich conditions (which are necessary and sufficient conditions for non-null electrovacuum spacetimes) , imply that $`(T_{\alpha \beta })`$ must take the form

$`T_{\alpha \beta }^{EM}=\text{diag}(\eta ,\eta ,\eta ,\eta ).`$

where $`\eta `$ is some positive quantity. Hence, $`\rho +p_r=0`$ follows and the metric must take the spherically symmetric form (61). The general Einstein-Maxwell solution for such a metric is the well-known Reissner-Nordström solution, with $`m(\stackrel{ˇ}{r})=M\frac{e^2}{2\stackrel{ˇ}{r}}`$ (where $`M`$ is the mass and $`e`$ is electric charge of the point source). The scale factor and the energy contents in the FL spacetime are then given by

$`a_{,t}^2=ϵ+{\displaystyle \frac{2M}{a\mathrm{\Sigma }^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{a^2\mathrm{\Sigma }^4}}|_{r=r_0},\rho ^{FL}={\displaystyle \frac{6M}{a^3\mathrm{\Sigma }^3}}{\displaystyle \frac{3e^2}{a^4\mathrm{\Sigma }^4}}|_{r=r_0},p^{FL}={\displaystyle \frac{e^2}{a^4\mathrm{\Sigma }^4}}|_{r=r_0}.`$

Summarising, we have

###### Proposition 3

The only static and axially symmetric electrovacuum region in a Friedman-Lemaître spacetime must be a two-sphere comoving with the cosmological flow and with Reissner-Nordström interior geometry.

Having discussed vacuum, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-term and electromagnetic fields, let us next analyse the perfect-fluid case. Imposing $`p_rp_T=0`$ and using the expressions above, we obtain a linear relation in $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$. The vanishing of the coefficient in $`\mathrm{cos}\theta `$ implies necessarily $`f0`$ while the other coefficient provides a rather long equation relating $`a(t)`$ and $`r(t)`$. Thus the following result also holds

###### Proposition 4

Any static and axially symmetric perfect-fluid region immersed in a Friedman-Lemaître cosmology must be spherically symmetric and its boundary must be an expanding (or contracting) two-sphere with its centre being at rest with respect to the cosmological flow.

Here the terms expanding and contracting are defined with respect to the cosmological fluid flow.

All these results above show that the most commonly used energy-momentum tensors imply necessarily that the matching hypersurface must be a two-sphere with its center being comoving with the cosmological fluid (and hence the matching hypersurface is spherically symmetric). Furthermore, the interior geometry must also be exactly spherically symmetric in the relevant open set $`\mathrm{\Pi }^1(\stackrel{o}{𝒲})`$ (this set may be empty in some marginal cases - see the previous section- but even in that particular situation the conclusions on the form of the matching hypersurface hold). Consequently, spherical symmetry is indeed an essential ingredient for the existence of reasonable static cavities in a FL expanding background. This implies that the Einstein-Straus model represents a very isolated situation, which poses serious doubts on the suitability of this model for providing a definitive answer to the problem of the influence of the cosmological expansion on the local physics. Even though this effect is probably very small at solar system scales (there is no experimental evidence for such an effect), this is not so clear at larger scales (ranging from galaxies to clusters of galaxies or even larger). In any case, more adequate models describing the problem should be analyzed before reaching definitive conclusions on this subject.

Before finishing this paper, a final comment may be adequate. Solving any matching problem has always a dual interpretation. Due to the symmetry $`(+)()`$ of the matching conditions, solving a matching between two spacetimes produces always as a side effect the matching of the two complementary regions discarded in the original matching (see  for a clear discussion of this fact). In our case, the complementary situation corresponds to an interior spatially homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid (with FL metric) and an static, axially symmetric exterior. Thus, irrespectively of any conditions on the static exterior (for instance, no conditions on asymptotic flatness or similar), it turns out that the shape of the interior fluid must be a two-sphere at each instant of time. Furthermore, for the most relevant exterior metrics (in particular vacuum and electrovacuum), the shape of the autogravitating fluid must be exactly spherically symmetric and the exterior geometry must be also exactly spherically symmetric. This side result is interesting in its own and can be phrased as follows.

A Friedman-Lemaître spacetime acting as a source for static and axially symmetric spacetimes with physically reasonable energy-momentum tensors (when the two canonical times match properly) requires that both the boundary of the fluid and the exterior geometry are exactly spherically symmetric, and hence the global spacetime must also be spherically symmetric.

## Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to José Senovilla for a very careful reading of this manuscript and for many useful discussions and criticisms which helped improving this paper. I would also like to thank the Ministerio de Educación y Cultura, Spain, for financial support under grant EX95 40895713.


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# Universal transport in 2D granular superconductors

## Abstract

The transport properties of quench condensed granular superconductors are presented and analyzed. These systems exhibit transitions from insulating to superconducting behavior as a function of inter-grain spacing. Superconductivity is characterized by broad transitions in which the resistance drops exponentially with reducing temperature. The slope of the log
R versus T curves turns out to be universaly dependent on the normal state film resistance for all measured granular systems. It does not depend on the material, critical temperature, geometry, or experimental set-up. We discuss possible physical scenarios to explain these findings.

PACS: 74.80.Bj, 74.76.Db, 74.50.+r

Two dimensional granular superconductors, i.e. systems of superconducting grains embedded in an insulating matrix, exhibit a superconductor to insulator transition (SIT) as a function of the inter-grain distance. Such systems are of interest since they can serve as a model system for many dirty superconductors. In particular it has been suggested that a granular superconductor can mimic the behavior of high TC superconductors and its properties can be used to explain some of the features observed in the cuprates .

An established technique to study the properties of granular superconductors is quench condensation . In this method one performs sequential evaporations on a cryogenically cold substrate under UHV conditions using the following scheme: Metallic leads for four-terminal measurements are prepared on an insulating substrate which is then mounted onto an evacuated measurement probe and immersed in a liquid He bath. The low temperature of the probe causes cryopumping and hence the substrate is situated in UHV conditions and, at the same time, at cryogenic temperatures. This enables evaporation of ultra-clean thin superconducting layers on a substrate held at temperatures lower than 10K while continuously monitoring the film resistance and thickness. Once a desired resistance (or film thickness) is achieved, the evaporation is terminated and the transport properties are measured. Incremental layers of material are then added in-situ and further measurements are taken at different film resistances. Using this method one can study the properties of a single sample throughout the entire transition from an insulator to a superconductor as a function of the amount of deposited material while keeping the sample at low temperatures and in a UHV environment without having to thermally cycle it (risking metallurgical or structural changes due to annealing) or to expose it to atmosphere (thus oxidizing the surface).

If the samples are quench condensed on a passivated substrate (such as SiO2), they grow in a granular manner so that the film begins its growth as disconnected islands with diameters of 100-200 Å . The average distance between the islands decreases upon adding material. Beyond a percolation threshold, the grains connect, forming a continuous conducting layer. In these samples there is a critical nominal thickness, $`d_C`$, below which no conductivity can be measured (the sheet resistance, R, is larger than 10$`{}_{}{}^{10}\mathrm{\Omega })`$. Once the thickness, d, of the sample is larger than $`d_C,`$ R drops exponentially with thickness until, for $`R6k\mathrm{\Omega },`$ it crosses over to a normal ohmic behavior ($`R\alpha 1/d`$) .

Varying the thickness of the film causes a transition from an insulating behavior for the thinnest films to a superconducting behavior for thick films. Figure 1 demonstrates examples for this transition in three different granular superconductors: a Pb film (critical temperature, $`T_C,`$7.2 K), a Sn film ($`T_C`$4.5K) and a Pb/Ag bilayer. The latter is a system in which a thin layer of insulating granular Pb is quench condensed on a SiO2 substrate followed by sequential evaporations of Ag ultrathin layers . The curves were measured in a shielded room using standard 4 probe technics and assuring, for each point on the curve, that the I-V characteristics are in the linear regime.

The three systems show a transition from an insulator for thin films to a superconductor at thicker films. In all 2D granular systems these transitions are characterized by broad resistance tails and critical temperatures which are not very well defined until the resistance of the film becomes low. The transitions become sharper as material is added to the film. In this paper we define $`T_C`$ as the temperature at which the resistance starts dropping exponentially with lowering the temperature. We justify this by observing that this is the temperature in which the individual grains become superconducting even in the insulating case as discussed below. In the Pb and Sn films (top two graphs in figure 1) $`T_C`$ has bulk value and barely changes throughout the entire transition. Moreover, even on the insulating side of the SIT the curve changes its slope at $`T=T_C`$ reflecting the presence of superconductivity even in the thinnest measurable samples. The fact that the grains are superconducting with bulk properties throughout the entire transition has been demonstrated by tunneling measurements . A bulk energy gap was observed in the grains even when the film was on the insulating side of the SIT.

In the Pb/Ag film the $`T_C`$ decreases as material is added to the film. This is due to suppression of superconductivity in the Pb grains by the silver overlayer because of proximity effects. Nevertheless, the general behavior of the insulator to superconductor transition is very similar to that of the pure superconductors.

The transport curves shown in figure 1 are attributed to the unique nature of the SIT in a granular structure . In these systems each grain sustains superconductivity with bulk properties. However, for the high resistance samples, there are rapid, thermally activated phase fluctuations between the grains leading to an insulating R-T curve. As the grains become closer the inter-grain Josephson coupling increases until phase coherence is achieved throughout the film.

A striking feature common to the quench condensed granular superconductors is that at temperatures below $`T_C`$ the sheet resistance decreases exponentially with decreasing temperature and can be described approximately by an ”inverse arrennius” law:

$$R=R_0e^{\frac{T}{T_0}}$$
(1)
It is important to note that we see no flattening of the R-T curve ( resistance approaching a flat temperature dependence at low temperatures) in any of our samples and in no regime of thicknesses . Nor does the R-T change its trend and begin dropping to zero resistance at low temperature. The dependence described in equation 1 is observed in all of our granular samples using different materials and different measurement apparatuses. It spans many orders of magnitude in R, persists to temperatures below 100 mK  and is observed for the different steps of the sequential evaporations providing the resistance is smaller than a few tens of $`k\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Moreover, the slope of the log R versus T curves, $`1/T_o`$ of equation 1, turns out to be universal for all of our samples. It depends only on the normal state sheet resistance, $`R_N,`$ and does not depend on the material, the critical temperature or sample geometry. We illustrate this in Figure 2 where we show the dependence of the inverse slope, $`T_0,`$ on $`R_N`$ for a large number of granular superconductors (different materials, geometries and prepared in various quench condensation evaporators). It is seen that all the slopes fall on a master-plot having the form of:

$$T_0C^{}R_N$$
(2)
where C\* is a constant of approximately 0.05$`\frac{K}{k\mathrm{\Omega }}.`$ Note that we have included samples having different critical temperatures as well as the Pb/Ag system in which $`T_C`$ varies with the thickness (and hence with $`R_N`$).

This observation indicates that the behavior of the superconducting tails does not depend on the properties of the superconducting grains themselves but only on their geometrical arrangement (density, inter-grain spacing, morphology configuration etc.) which determines the tunneling percolation network and $`R_N`$.

Two superconductors having the same $`R_N`$ but different critical temperatures $`T_{C1}`$ and $`T_{C2}`$ will have parallel superconducting R-T tails, at temperatures lower than the respective $`T_C,`$ shifted by $`T_{C1}T_{C2}.`$ An example for such behavior is shown in the insert of figure 2.

We can now combine this observation with equations 1 and 2 and extract the expression for R0 of equation 1:

$$R_0=R_Ne^{\frac{T_C}{T_0}}=R_Ne^{\frac{T_C}{C^{}R_N}}$$
(3)
R0 is the value of the resistance obtained by extrapolating the R-T curves to T=0. This means that if the observed exponential R-T curves persist to zero temperature the samples will exhibit a finite zero-temperature resistance which will depend both on $`R_N`$ and on $`T_C`$.

In an attempt to examine possible intuitive understanding of the observed phenomena we note that at temperatures below bulk $`T_C`$ the grains have been shown to be fully superconducting . Hence, each two grains are expected to be Josephson coupled with a Josephson binding energy of the form:

$$Ej=\frac{\pi \mathrm{}}{4e^2}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(T)}{R_N}\mathrm{tanh}\frac{\mathrm{\Delta }(T)}{2K_BT}$$
(4)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }(T)`$ is the temperature dependent superconducting gap and RN is the normal resistance between the grains. One can expect that the ratio $`\frac{Ej}{K_BT}`$ would determine whether the grains are phase coupled or not. As the temperature of a granular system is lowered Ej becomes larger than KBT in an increasing number of pairs of grains thus increasing the effective superconducting regions which are phase coherent. This leads to a characteristic ”phase-coupled” length which grows with decreasing temperature until superconducting percolation is achieved.

However, the naive model described above can not explain the observed broad superconducting tails in our films. Since the samples are two dimensional, scaling considerations imply that as long as superconducting percolation is not achieved throughout the sample, the resistance of the granular system should be independent on the size of the superconducting clusters. The growth of the phase coherent clusters with decreasing temperature would not change the overall 2D resistance. One can expect to see a flat resistance versus temperature curve below the percolation threshold and a sharp superconducting transition at the percolation threshold. The fact that the experimental transitions are broad implies that the resistance of the individual junctions is temperature dependence. This urges us to consider superconductor fluctuation effects as fluctuations introduce a broad temperature dependence in a Josephson junction resistance rather than a sharp transition at Ej=KBT.

The temperature dependence of the zero-bias resistance of each pair of grains due to thermal phase fluctuations is expected to take the Ambegaokar-Halperin form :

$$R(T)=\frac{R_N}{(I_O(\frac{Ej(T)}{K_BT}))^2}$$
(5)
where I0(X) is the modified bessel function of order 0. Using this model we have calculated the temperature dependence of 1D arrays of junctions subject to thermal fluctuations. The results of the simulations for Pb and Sn samples having different $`R_N`$ are shown in figure 3. It is seen that R(T) may qualitatively mimic an exponential dependence for temperatures larger than about $`\frac{T_C}{2}`$. As $`R_N`$ is reduced the R-T curves become sharper in a similar way to that seen in the experiments. While the curves are not truly eT dependent, for purposes of illustration we can extract an approximated slope from each curve. The extracted slopes are plotted on the master-plot of figure 2 showing relatively good agreement with the experimental results. We can not expect better than qualitative agreement as this is a simple 1D chain model.

Hence, the thermal-fluctuation-picture can provide some insight to the physics of the 2D granular films. However, two major points in which the simple model deviates from the experimental data have to be noted: In the first place the theoretical model predicts that the slopes should depend on $`\frac{T}{T_C}.`$ Our simulations fail to reproduce the $`T_C`$ independence and the ”universality” of the experimental transition tails. The calculated curves for Sn and Pb samples having the same $`R_N`$ yield Sn slopes which are consistently sharper than those of Pb. Secondly, the thermal-fluctuation model can qualitatively imitate the experimental behavior only for a limited range of temperatures. At low temperatures the thermal fluctuations are expected to freeze out causing the resistance to drop much more rapidly, until, for zero temperature, the resistance reaches zero ( $`R_0`$=0). We do not see signs for such a tendency in the experiments even at very low temperatures. We have considered the possibility that at low temperatures quantum phase fluctuations dominate the behavior and induce a finite resistance even at T=0. The presence of such effects is consistent with the observed experimental dependence of $`R_0`$ on $`T_C`$ as shown in equation 3 since the quantum fluctuations are expected to decay exponentially with Ej. However, we are not able to reproduce the experimental exponential R-T curves over the entire temperature range using a model which combines thermal fluctuations and quantum fluctuations. Such a model would suggest that at low temperature the R-T curve would flatten out and saturate at a constant value. As noted above, we do not observe such behavior in any of our samples. Clearly, further theoretical treatment is required in order to shed more light on the origin of the findings presented in this paper.

This research was supported by the Israel - USA binational science foundation BSF #1999332 and by the NSF grant DMR0097242.