Non-spherical sources of static gravitational fields: investigating the boundaries of the no-hair theorem (Q2570051)

A new, globally regular metric, describing a static, axially symmetric object in General Relativity is presented. The model is composed by a vacuum Weyl-Levi-Civita special field -- the so called gamma metric -- generated by a regular static distribution of mass-energy. Standard requirements of physical reasonableness such as, energy, matching and regularity conditions are satisfied. The interior solution matches smoothly on the boundary surface to one of the static axially symmetric vacuum solutions. This new interior would allow to study the behaviour of very compact self-gravitating sources. The model is used as a toy in investigating various issues related to the directional behavior of naked singularities in static spacetimes and the black hole (Schwarzschild) limit. Few inaccuracies were detected: The reviewer considers that the use of ``Ricci tensor'' instead of ``Ricci'' (p. 1372, below the formula 2.2), as well as more accuracy in such phrases as ``the reasonable choice epsilon = 1/100 leads to central pressure 1/1000 times greater than the corresponding pressure for the spherical symmetric case'' (p. 1383, the finish of the appendix) will improve the quality of the writing.