English

The memory effect in impulsive plane waves: comments, corrections, clarifications

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2019-05-02 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

Recently the 'memory effect' has been studied in plane gravitational waves and, in particular, in impulsive plane waves. Based on an analysis of the particle motion (mainly in Baldwin-Jeffery-Rosen coordinates) a 'velocity memory effect' is claimed to be found in [P.-M. Zhang, C. Duval, and P. A. Horvathy. Memory effect for impulsive gravitational waves. Classical Quantum Gravity, 35(6):065011, 20, 2018]. Here we point out a conceptual mistake in this account and employ earlier works to explain how to correctly derive the particle motion and how to correctly deal with the notorious distributional Brinkmann form of the metric and its relation to the continuous Rosen form.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.10940,
  title  = {The memory effect in impulsive plane waves: comments, corrections, clarifications},
  author = {Roland Steinbauer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.10940},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

Identical to the version published as "Comment on 'Memory effect for impulsive gravitational waves'" in Class. Quantum Grav., 12 pages, LaTeX

R2 v1 2026-06-23T06:21:54.960Z