NEWMAN-PENROSE APPROACH TO TWISTING DEGENERATE METRICS

The well known method of Newman and Penrose is used to find solutions of the Einstein empty space field equations, which are algebraically special and where the degenerate principal null vectors are not hypersurface orthogonal. As is to be expected the method systematically yields the results obtained by Kerr. An explanation is given of the complex coordinate transformation technique of generating new metrics from Schwarzschild's; also a generalisation of Kerr and Schild type metrics is investigated. © 1969 Springer-Verlag.