What makes a shear-free spherical perfect fluid be inhomogeneous with tidal effects?

This is an important and natural question as the spacetime shear, inhomogeneity and tidal effects are all intertwined via the Einstein field equations. Though many solutions with these properties exist in the literature, in this paper we identify, via a geometrical analysis, the important physical reason behind these solutions. We show that such scenarios are possible for limited classes of equations of state that are solutions to a highly nonlinear and fourth order differential equation. To show this, we use a covariant semitetrad spacetime decomposition and present a novel geometrical classification of shear-free locally rotationally symmetric perfect fluid self-gravitating systems, in terms of the covariantly defined fluid acceleration and the fluid expansion. Noteworthily, we deduce the governing differential equation that gives the possible limited equations of state of matter. © 2023, The Author(s).