On the equivalence of spacetimes, the Cartan-Karlhede algorithm

Abstract

It is well known that in general relativity theory two spacetimes whose metrics are related by a coordinate transformation are physically equivalent. However, given two line elements, it is virtually impossible to implement the most general coordinate transformation in order to check the equivalence of the spacetimes. In this paper we present the so-called Cartan-Karlhede algorithm, which provides a finite sequence of steps to decide whether or not two metrics are equivalent. The point of this note is to illustrate the method through several simple examples, so that the reader can learn the fundamentals and details of the algorithm in practice.