A family of Finch and Skea relativistic stars

Abstract

Several new families of exact solution to the Einstein-Maxwell system of differential equations are found for anisotropic charged matter. The spacetime geometry is that of Finch and Skea which satisfies all criteria for physical acceptability. The exact solutions can be expressed in terms of elementary functions, Bessel functions and modified Bessel functions. When a parameter is restricted to be an integer then the special functions reduce to simple elementary functions. The uncharged model of Finch and Skea (Class. Quantum Grav. 6, 467 (1989)) and the charged model of Hansraj and Maharaj (Int. J. Mod. Phys. D 8, 1311 (2006)) are regained as special cases. The solutions found admit a barotropic equation of state. A graphical analysis indicates that the matter and electric quantities are well behaved.