English

Ambient metrics for $n$-dimensional $pp$-waves

Differential Geometry 2015-05-13 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We provide an explicit formula for the Fefferman-Graham-ambient metric of an nn-dimensional conformal pppp-wave in those cases where it exists. In even dimensions we calculate the obstruction explicitly. Furthermore, we describe all 4-dimensional pppp-waves that are Bach-flat, and give a large class of Bach-flat examples which are conformally Cotton-flat, but not conformally Einstein. Finally, as an application, we use the obtained ambient metric to show that even-dimensional pppp-waves have vanishing critical QQ-curvature.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0810.2903,
  title  = {Ambient metrics for $n$-dimensional $pp$-waves},
  author = {Thomas Leistner and Pawel Nurowski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.2903},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

17 pages, in v2 footnote and references added and typos corrected, in v3 remark in the Introduction about Brinkmann's results corrected and footnote added

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:31:26.315Z