Anisotropic geodesic fluid spheres in general relativity

Abstract

It is shown that unlike the perfect fluid case, anisotropic fluids (principal stresses unequal) may be geodesic, without this implying the vanishing of (spatial) pressure gradients. Then the condition of vanishing four acceleration is integrated in noncomoving coordinates. The resulting models are necessarily dynamic, and the mass function is expressed in terms of the fluid velocity as measured by a locally Minkowskian observer. An explicit example is worked out.