Spinning C-metric: radiative spacetime with accelerating, rotating black holes

Abstract

The spinning C-metric was discovered by Plebanski and Demianski as a generalization of the standard C-metric which is known to represent uniformly accelerated non-rotating black holes. We first transform the spinning C-metric into Weyl coordinates and analyze some of its properties as Killing vectors and curvature invariants. A transformation is then found which brings the metric into the canonical form of the radiative spacetimes with the boost-rotation symmetry. By analytically continuing the metric across "acceleration horizons", two new regions of the spacetime arise in which both Killing vectors are spacelike. We show that this metric can represent two uniformly accelerated, spinning black holes, either connected by a conical singularity, or with conical singularities extending from each of them to infinity. The radiative character of the metric is briefly discussed.