CUMULATIVE DRAGGING - AN INTRINSIC CHARACTERISTIC OF STATIONARY AXISYMMETRICAL SPACETIME

The cumulative drag index defined recently by Prasanna has been genera lised to include the centrifugal acceleration. We have studied the beh aviour of the drag index for the Kerr metric and the Neugebauer-Meinel metric representing a self-gravitating rotating disk and their Newton ian approximations. The similarity of the behaviour of the index for a given set of parameters, both in the full and approximated forms, sug gests that the index characterises an intrinsic property of spacetime with rotation. Analysing the index for a given set of parameters shows possible constraints on them. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.