Curvature Invariant (general Relativity) - Distinguishing Lorentzian Manifolds

Distinguishing Lorentzian Manifolds

An important question related to Curvature invariants is when the set of polynomial curvature invariants can be used to (locally) distinguish manifolds. To be able to do this is necessary to include higher-order invariants including derivatives of the Riemann tensor but in the Lorentzian case, it is known that there are spacetimes which cannot be distinguished; e.g., the VSI spacetimes for which all such curvature invariants vanish and thus cannot be distinguished from flat space. This failure of being able to distinguishing Lorentzian manifolds is related to the fact that the Lorentz group is non-compact.

There are still examples of cases when we can distinguish Lorentzian manifolds using their invariants. Examples of such are fully general Petrov type I spacetimes with no Killing vectors, see Coley et al. below. Indeed, it was here found that the spacetimes failing to be distinguished by their set of curvature invariants are all Kundt spacetimes.