A general framework for an emergent universe scenario has been given which makes use of an equation of state. The general features of the model have also been studied and possible primordial composition of the universe have been suggested.

We consider the general situation of a compact relativistic body with anisotropic pressures in the presence of the electromagnetic field. The equation of state for the matter distribution is linear and may be applied to strange stars with quark matter. Three classes of new exact solutions are found to the Einstein-Maxwell system. This is achieved by specifying a particular form for one of the gravitational potentials and the electric field intensity. We can regain anisotropic and isotropic models from our general class of solution. A physical analysis indicates that the charged solutions describe realistic compact spheres with anisotropic matter distribution. The equation of state is consistent with dark energy stars and charged quark matter distributions. The masses and central densities correspond to realistic stellar objects in the general case when anisotropy and charge are present.

By assuming a particular mass function we find new exact solutions to the Einstein field equations with an anisotropic matter distribution. The solutions are shown to be relevant for the description of compact stars. A distinguishing feature of this class of solutions is that they admit a linear equation of state which can be applied to strange stars with quark matter.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Mon. Not. R. Astron. So

Lovelock theory is a natural extension of the Einstein theory of general relativity to higher dimensions in which the first and second orders correspond, respectively, to general relativity and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We present exact black hole solutions of D ≥ 4-dimensional spacetime for first-, second-, and third-order Lovelock gravities in a string cloud background. Further, we compute the mass, temperature, and entropy of black hole solutions for the higher-dimensional general relativity and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theories and also perform thermodynamic stability of black holes. It turns out that the presence of the Gauss-Bonnet term and/or background string cloud completely changes the black hole thermodynamics. Interestingly, the entropy of a black hole is unaffected due to a background string cloud. We rediscover several known spherically symmetric black hole solutions in the appropriate limits.

It is well known that Robertson-Walker spacetimes admit a conformal Killing vector normal to the spacelike homogeneous hypersurfaces. Because these spacetimes are conformally flat, there are a further eight conformal Killing vectors, which are neither normal nor tangent to the homogeneous hypersurfaces. We find these further conformal Killing vectors and the Lie algebra of the full GIs of conformal motions. Conditions on the metric scale factor are determined which reduce some of the conformal Killing vectors to homothetic Killing vectors or Killing vectors, allowing us to regain in a unified way the known special geometries. The non-normal conformal Killing vectors provide a counterexample to show that conformal motions do not, in general, map a fluid flow conformally. We also use these non-normal vectors to find the general solution of the null geodesic equation and photon Liouville equation.

We perform a careful investigation of the problem of physically realistic gravitational collapse of massive stars in f (R)-gravity. We show that the extra matching conditions that arise in the modified gravity impose strong constraints on the stellar structure and thermodynamic properties. In our opinion these constraints are unphysical. We prove that no homogeneous stars with nonconstant Ricci scalar can be matched smoothly with a static exterior for any nonlinear function f (R). Therefore, these extra constraints make classes of physically realistic collapse scenarios in general relativity, non-admissible in these theories. We also find an exact solution for an inhomogeneous collapsing star in the Starobinski model that obeys all the energy and matching conditions. However, we argue that such solutions are fine-tuned and unstable to matter perturbations. Possible consequences on black hole physics and the cosmic censorship conjecture are also discussed.

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We find two new classes of exact solutions to the Einstein-Maxwell system of equations. The matter content satisfies a linear equation of state consistent with quark matter; a particular form of one of the gravitational potentials is specified to generate solutions. The exact solutions can be written in terms of elementary functions, and these can be related to quark matter in the presence of an electromagnetic field. The first class of solutions generalizes the Mak-Harko model. The second class of solutions does not admit any singularities in the matter and gravitational potentials at the center.