Abstract. The authors generalise the results of Dray and 't Hooft (1986) by showing how to join two or more Reissner-Nordstrom spacetimes with different charges and masses along null cylinders representing charged shells of massless matter. Conservation laws are then used to give a rigorous definition of the charge and energy of the shells. They point out that their results are not confined to general relativity but that there is also a special relativistic analogue of a collapsing charged shell.

Print publication: Issue 1 (January 1990)