Lie symmetries of the energy-momentum tensor for plane symmetric static spacetimes

Abstract

Matter collineations (MCs) are the vector fields along which the energy-momentum tensor remains invariant under the Lie transport. Invariance of the metric, the Ricci and the Riemann tensors have been studied extensively and the vectors along which these tensors remain invariant are called Killing vectors (KVs), Ricci collineations (RCs) and curvature collineations (CCs), respectively. In this paper plane symmetric static spacetimes have been studied for their MCs. Explicit form of MCs together with the Lie algebra admitted by them has been presented. Examples of spacetimes have been constructed for which MCs have been compared with their RCs and KVs. The comparison shows that neither of the sets of RCs and MCs contains the other, in general.