Spinning C metric: Radiative spacetime with accelerating, rotating black holes - art. no. 044004

The spinning C metric was discovered by Plebanski and Demianski as a genera lization of the standard C metric which is known to represent uniformly acc elerated nonrotating black holes. We first transform the spinning C metric into Weyl coordinates and analyze some of its properties as Killing vectors and curvature invariants. A transformation is then found which brings the metric into the canonical form of radiative space times with boost-rotation symmetry. By analytically continuing the metric across ''acceleration hori zons,'' two new regions of spacetime arise in which both Killing vectors ar e spacelike. We show that this metric can represent two uniformly accelerat ed, spinning black holes, either connected by a conical singularity, or wit h conical singularities extending from each of them to infinity. The radiat ive character of the metric is briefly discussed. [S0556-2821(99)02414-5].