Criteria for energy conditions

Abstract

In model building studies, it is important to check the energy conditions for the corresponding energy-momentum tensor determined by the gravitational field equations in order to single out physically reasonable models. In this process, one often encounters a situation where the energy-momentum tensor has one off-diagonal "space-time" component in the frame with an orthonormal basis in a given spacetime. We derive useful criteria of energy-momentum tensors for their Hawking-Ellis types and the standard energy conditions in such situations. As demonstrations, we apply those criteria to four different systems.