Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Applied Mathematics Volume 2013, Article ID 196385, 12 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/196385 Research Article Conformal Mappings in Relativistic Astrophysics S. Hansraj, K. S. Govinder, and N. Mewalal Astrophysics and Cosmology Research Unit, School of Mathematics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X54001, Durban 4000, South Africa Correspondence should be addressed to K. S. Govinder;
[email protected] Received 1 March 2013; Accepted 10 June 2013 Academic Editor: Md Sazzad Chowdhury Copyright © 2013 S. Hansraj et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. We describe the use of conformal mappings as a mathematical mechanism to obtain exact solutions of the Einstein field equations in general relativity. The behaviour of the spacetime geometry quantities is given under a conformal transformation, and the Einstein field equations are exhibited for a perfect fluid distribution matter configuration. The field equations are simplified andthenexact static and nonstatic solutions are found. We investigate the solutions as candidates to represent realistic distributions of matter. In particular, we consider the positive definiteness of the energy density and pressure and the causality criterion, as well as the existence of a vanishing pressure hypersurface to mark the boundary of the astrophysical fluid. 1. Introduction By considering the case of a uniform density sphere, Schwarzschild [3]foundauniqueinteriorsolution.However, The gravitational evolution of celestial bodies may be mod- the problem of finding all possible solutions for a nonconstant eled by the Einstein field equations.