Ricci and Matter inheritance collineations of Robertson-Walker space-times

It is well known that every Killing vector is a Ricci and Matter collineation. Therefore the metric, the Ricci tensor and the energy-momentum tensor are all members of a large family of second order symmetric tensors which are invariant under a common group of symmetries. This family is described by a generic metric which is defined from the symmetry group of the space-time metric. The proper Ricci and Matter (inheritance) collineations are the (conformal) Killing vectors of the generic metric which are not (conformal) Killing vectors of the space-time metric. Using this observation we compute the Ricci and Matter inheritance collineations of the Robertson-Walker space-times and we determine the Ricci and Matter collineations without any further calculations. It is shown that these higher order symmetries can be used as supplementary conditions to produce an equation of state which is compatible with the Geometry and the Physics of the Robertson-Walker space-times.