Physical causes of energy-density inhomogenization and stability of energy-density homogeneity in relativistic self--gravitating fluids

We identify the factors responsible for the appearance of energy-density inhomogeneities in a self-gravitating fluid, and describe the evolution of those factors from an initially homogeneous distribution. It is shown that a specific combination of the Weyl tensor and/or local anisotropy of pressure and/or dissipative fluxes entails the formation of energy-density inhomogeneities. Different cases are analyzed in detail and in the particular case of dissipative fluids, the role of relaxational processes as well as non-local effects are brought out.