Kaigorodov spaces and their Penrose limits

Kaigorodov spaces arise, after spherical compactification, as near horizon limits of M2, M5, and D3-branes with a particular pp-wave propagating in a world volume direction. We show that the uncompactified near horizon configurations K\times S are solutions of D=11 or D=10 IIB supergravity which correspond to perturbed versions of their AdS \times S analogues. We derive the Penrose-Gueven limits of the Kaigorodov space and the total spaces and analyse their symmetries. An Inonu-Wigner contraction of the Lie algebra is shown to occur, although there is a symmetry enhancement. We compare the results to the maximally supersymmetric CW spaces found as limits of AdS\times S spacetimes: the initial gravitational perturbation on the brane and its near horizon geometry remains after taking non-trivial Penrose limits, but seems to decouple. One particuliar limit yields a time-dependent homogeneous plane-wave background whose string theory is solvable, while in the other cases we find inhomogeneous backgrounds.