The Sources of the a and B Degenerate Static Vacuum Fields

Abstract

We attempt to a physical interpretation of some known static vacuum solutions of Einstein's equations, namely, the A and B metrics of Ehlers and Kundt. All of them have axial symmetry, so they can be transformed to the Weyl form. In Weyl coordinates $\ln\sqrt{-g_{44}}$ obeys a Laplace equation, and from this a source, called The Newtonian image source can be identified. We use the image sources to interpret the metrics. The procedure is sucessful in some cases. In others it fails because the Weyl transform does not have reasonable properties at infinity.