Killing and conformal Killing tensors (Q295791)

Killing tensors are symmetric \(p\)-tensors with vanishing symmetrized covariant derivative. The main aim of this paper is to introduce Killing and conformal Killing tensors in a modern, coordinate-free formalism. This setting is used to reprove in a simpler way some known results, like Proposition 6.6 and Theorem 8.1. In addition, this formalism yields a unified treatment of some classes of conformal Killing tensors, e.g., special conformal Killing tensors. Moreover, several new results are obtained, like the classification of Stäckel 2-tensors with at most two eigenvalues or a generalized Weitzenböck formula.