Degenerate Metric Phase Boundaries
Abstract
The structure of boundaries between degenerate and nondegenerate solutions of Ashtekar's canonical reformulation of Einstein's equations is studied. Several examples are given of such "phase boundaries" in which the metric is degenerate on one side of a null hypersurface and non-degenerate on the other side. These include portions of flat space, Schwarzschild, and plane wave solutions joined to degenerate regions. In the last case, the wave collides with a planar phase boundary and continues on with the same curvature but degenerate triad, while the phase boundary continues in the opposite direction. We conjecture that degenerate phase boundaries are always null.
Cite
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/9706027,
title = {Degenerate Metric Phase Boundaries},
author = {Ingemar Bengtsson and Ted Jacobson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/9706027},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
16 pages, 2 figures; erratum included in separate file: errors in section 4, degenerate phase boundary is null without imposing field equations