Recently, the authors have formulated and explored a novel Painlevé–Gullstrand variant of the Lense–Thirring spacetime, which has some particularly elegant features, including unit-lapse, intrinsically flat spatial 3-slices, and some particularly simple geodesics—the “rain” geodesics. At the linear level in the rotation parameter, this spacetime is indistinguishable from the usual slow-rotation expansion of Kerr. Herein, we shall show that this spacetime possesses a nontrivial Killing tensor, implying separability of the Hamilton–Jacobi equation. Furthermore, we shall show that the Klein–Gordon equation is also separable on this spacetime. However, while the Killing tensor has a 2-form square root, we shall see that this 2-form square root of the Killing tensor is not a Killing–Yano tensor. Finally, the Killing-tensor-induced Carter constant is easily extracted, and now, with a fourth constant of motion, the geodesics become (in principle) explicitly integrable.

The standard Lense–Thirring metric is a century-old slow-rotation large-distance approximation to the gravitational field outside a rotating massive body, depending only on the total mass and angular momentum of the source. Although it is not an exact solution to the vacuum Einstein equations, asymptotically the Lense–Thirring metric approaches the Kerr metric at large distances. Herein we shall discuss a specific variant of the standard Lense–Thirring metric, carefully chosen for simplicity, clarity, and various forms of improved mathematical and physical behaviour, (to be more carefully defined in the body of the article). We shall see that this Lense–Thirring variant can be viewed as arising from the linearization of a suitably chosen tetrad representing the Kerr spacetime. In particular, we shall construct an explicit unit-lapse Painlevé–Gullstrand variant of the Lense–Thirring spacetime, one that has flat spatial slices, a very simple and physically intuitive tetrad, and extremely simple curvature tensors. We shall verify that this variant of the Lense–Thirring spacetime is Petrov type I, (so it is not algebraically special), but nevertheless possesses some very straightforward timelike geodesics, (the “rain” geodesics). We shall also discuss on-axis and equatorial geodesics, ISCOs (innermost stable circular orbits) and circular photon orbits. Finally, we wrap up by discussing some astrophysically relevant estimates, and analyze what happens if we extrapolate down to small values of r; verifying that for sufficiently slow rotation we explicitly recover slowly rotating Schwarzschild geometry. This Lense–Thirring variant can be viewed, in its own right, as a “black hole mimic”, of direct interest to the observational astronomy community.

The standard Lense-Thirring metric is a century-old slow-rotation large-distance approximation to the gravitational field outside a rotating massive body, depending only on the total mass and angular momentum of the source. Although it is not an exact solution to the vacuum Einstein equations, asymptotically the Lense-Thirring metric approaches the Kerr metric at large distances. Herein we shall discuss a specific variant of the standard Lense-Thirring metric, carefully chosen for simplicity and clarity. In particular we shall construct a unit-lapse Painlevé-Gullstrand version of the Lense-Thirring spacetime that has flat spatial slices, some straightforward timelike geodesics, (the "rain" geodesics), and simple curvature tensors.

Recently, the current authors have formulated and extensively explored a rather novel Painlevé–Gullstrand variant of the slow-rotation Lense–Thirring spacetime, a variant which has particularly elegant features—including unit lapse, intrinsically flat spatial 3-slices, and a separable Klein–Gordon equation (wave operator). This spacetime also possesses a non-trivial Killing tensor, implying separability of the Hamilton–Jacobi equation, the existence of a Carter constant, and complete formal integrability of the geodesic equations. Herein, we investigate the geodesics in some detail, in the general situation demonstrating the occurrence of “ultra-elliptic” integrals. Only in certain special cases can the complete geodesic integrability be explicitly cast in terms of elementary functions. The model is potentially of astrophysical interest both in the asymptotic large-distance limit and as an example of a “black hole mimic”, a controlled deformation of the Kerr spacetime that can be contrasted with ongoing astronomical observations.

The Kerr spacetime is perhaps the most astrophysically important of the currently known exact solutions to the Einstein field equations. Whenever spacetimes can be put in unit-lapse form it becomes possible to identify some very straightforward timelike geodesics, (the ‘rain’ geodesics), making the physical interpretation of these spacetimes particularly clean and elegant. The most well-known of these unit-lapse formulations is the Painlevé–Gullstrand form of the Schwarzschild spacetime, though there is also a Painlevé–Gullstrand form of the Lense–Thirring (slow rotation) spacetime. More radically there are also two known unit-lapse forms of the Kerr spacetime—the Doran and Natário metrics—though these are not precisely in Painlevé–Gullstrand form. Herein we shall seek to explicate the most general unit-lapse form of the Kerr spacetime. While at one level this is ‘merely’ a choice of coordinates, it is a strategically and tactically useful choice of coordinates, thereby making the technically challenging but astrophysically crucial Kerr spacetime somewhat easier to deal with. While in the current article we focus on the ‘rain’ geodesics, it should be noted that the explicit unit-lapse metrics we present are also useful for looking at other more complicated geodesics in the Kerr spacetime.