Necessary and sufficient conditions for n-dimensional conformal Einstein spaces via dimensionally dependent identities

Abstract

Listing has recently extended results of Kozameh, Newman and Tod for four-dimensional spacetimes and presented a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a metric to be locally conformally equivalent to an Einstein metric in all semi-Riemannian spaces of dimension n>3 -- subject to a non-degeneracy restriction on the Weyl tensor. By exploiting dimensionally dependent identities we demonstrate how to construct two alternative versions of these necessary and sufficient conditions which we believe will be useful in applications. The four-dimensional case is discussed in detail and examples are also given in five and six dimensions.