Abstract. In a previous paper, we showed that the traditional form of the charged C-metric can be transformed, by a change of coordinates, into one with an explicitly factorizable structure function. This new form of the C-metric has the advantage that its properties become much simpler to analyse. In this paper, we propose an analogous new form for the rotating charged C-metric, with structure function G(ξ) = (1 − ξ²)(1 + r₊Aξ)(1 + r₋Aξ), where r_± are the usual locations of the horizons in the Kerr–Newman black hole. Unlike the non-rotating case, this new form is not related to the traditional one by a coordinate transformation. We show that the physical distinction between these two forms of the rotating C-metric lies in the nature of the conical singularities causing the black holes to accelerate apart: the new form is free of torsion singularities and therefore does not contain any closed timelike curves. We claim that this new form should be considered the natural generalization of the C-metric with rotation.

PACS number: 04.20.Jb

Print publication: Issue 1 (7 January 2005)
Received 6 October 2004
Published 7 December 2004