SPHERICAL-SYMMETRY AND MASS-ENERGY IN HIGHER DIMENSIONS

The components of the Einstein tensor and other relations are given for a spherically symmetric metric in null coordinates in higher dimensions. These relations arc particularly relevant to the study of gravitational collapse of a perfect fluid with heat flow but without viscosity, where the exterior space cannot be considered as vacuum and matching to Schwarzschild space-time is not suitable. The analysis generalizes to higher dimensions work of Cahill and McVittie in 4D space-time. Using the expression for the ''mass function,'' it is observed that pressure vanishes at the boundary of the distribution for a perfect fluid in the higher-dimensional case also, but the same is not true when heat flow is considered.