Hawking–Ellis classification of stress-energy: test-fields versus back-reaction Prado Mart´ın-Moruno1 ID and Matt Visser2 ID 1 Departamento de F´ısica Te´orica and IPARCOS, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, E-28040 Madrid, Spain 2 School of Mathematics and Statistics, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand E-mail:
[email protected],
[email protected] Abstract: We consider the Hawking–Ellis (Segr´e–Pleba´nski) classification of stress-energy tensors, both in the test-field limit, and in the presence of back-reaction governed by the usual Einstein equations. For test fields it is not too difficult to get a type IV stress-energy via quantum vacuum polarization effects. (For example, consider the Unruh quantum vacuum state for a massless scalar field in the Schwarzschild background.) However, in the presence of back-reaction driven by the ordinary Einstein equations the situation is often much more constrained. For instance: (1) in any static spacetime the stress- energy is always type I in the domain of outer communication, and on any horizon that might be present; (2) in any stationary axisymmetric spacetime the stress-energy is always type I on any horizon that might be present; (3) on any Killing horizon that is extendable to a bifurcation 2-surface the stress-energy is always type I; (4) in any stationary axisymmetric spacetime the stress-energy is always type I on the axis of symmetry; (5) some of the homogeneous Bianchi cosmologies are guaranteed to be Hawking–Ellis type I (for example, all the Bianchi type I cosmologies, all the arXiv:2102.13551v2 [gr-qc] 5 Mar 2021 FLRW cosmologies, and all the “single mode” Bianchi cosmologies).