LETTER Frame Dragging Anomalies for Rotating Bodies

The prototype example of frame dragging arises in the Kerr metric. A test particle with zero angular momentum released from a nonrotating frame, far from the source of the Kerr metric, accumulates nonzero angular velocity in the same angular direction as the source of the metric, as the test particle plunges toward the origin (in Boyer-Lindquist coordinates). This “dragging of inertial frames,” or frame dragging, is due to the influence of gravity alone, and has no counterpart in Newtonian physics. Frame dragging is a general relativistic feature, not only of the exterior Kerr solution, but of all solutions to the Einstein field equations associated with rotating sources. In this paper we show that surprising frame dragging anomalies can occur