Closed conformal Killing-Yano tensor and uniqueness of generalized Kerr-NUT-de Sitter spacetime

Abstract

The higher-dimensional Kerr-NUT-de Sitter spacetime describes the general rotating asymptotically de Sitter black hole with NUT parameters. It is known that such a spacetime possesses a rank-2 closed conformal Killing-Yano (CKY) tensor as a ``hidden'' symmetry which provides the separation of variables for the geodesic equations and Klein-Gordon equations. We present a classification of higher-dimensional spacetimes admitting a rank-2 closed CKY tensor. This provides a generalization of the Kerr-NUT-de Sitter spacetime. In particular, we show that the Kerr-NUT-de Sitter spacetime is the only spacetime with a non-degenerate CKY tensor.