Conformal symmetries in Vaidya geometry and collapse.

In this paper, we perform a comprehensive analysis of conformal symmetries in the generalized Vaidya spacetime and establish several new results. First, a proper conformal Killing vector is shown to exist in the radial direction and interestingly the generalized Vaidya spacetimes with this symmetry are shown to be the subclass of those, which are embeddable in five-dimensional Euclidean space. The general form of the mass function that enables the proper and planar conformal symmetry in the v–r plane is also determined. This treatment also includes earlier results. We also consider the gravitational collapse of these spacetimes with proper planar conformal symmetry in the context of cosmic censorship conjecture. We obtain an interesting and novel result that censorship is always obeyed for these spacetimes, and no locally naked central singularity forms as the end state of the continual collapse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]