Gravitational field of a radiating rotating body

A nonstationary solution of the Einstein field equations, corresponding to the field of a radiating rotating body, is presented. The solution is algebraically special of Petrov type II with a twisting, shear-free, null congruence identical to that of the Kerr metric. The new metric bears the same relation to the Kerr metric as does Vaidya's metric to the Schwarzschild metric, in the sense that in both cases the radiating solution is generated from the nonradiating one by replacing the mass parameter by an arbitrary function of a retarded time coordinate. The energy-momentum tensor in the present case, however, has two terms, a Vaidya type radiative one and an additional nonradiative residual term. Due to the presence of the nonradiative term in this case, however, the energy-momentum tensor becomes Vaidya-like asymptotically only, thus allowing for a geometrical optics interpretation. Asymptotically, part of the radiation field is purely electromagnetic with a Maxwell tensor which admits only one principal null direction corresponding to the undirectional flow of radiation.