The Chevreton Superenergy Tensor in Einstein-Maxwell Spacetimes

Abstract: In this thesis we investigate the superenergy tensor that was introduced by Chevreton in 1964 as an electromagnetic counterpart to the Bel-Robinson tensor for the gravitational feld.We show that in Einstein-Maxwell spacetimes with a source-free electromagnetic feld, the Chevreton superenergy tensor has many interesting properties. It is a completely symmetric rank-4 tensor and it gives rise to conserved currents for orthogonally transitive 1- and 2-parameter isometry groups.The trace of this tensor is divergence-free and it is related to the Bach tensor. We investigate the implications for when the trace vanishes and we are able to determine the full set of such spacetimes. We use this to treat the problem of Einstein{-Maxwell spacetimes that are conformally related to Einstein spaces and we find new exact solutions with this property.