Related papers: On the completeness of impulsive gravitational wav…
We investigate geodesic completeness in the full family of pp-wave or Brinkmann spacetimes in their extended as well as in their impulsive form. This class of geometries contains the recently studied gyratonic pp-waves, modelling the…
Global geometric properties of product manifolds ${\cal M}= M \times \R^2$, endowed with a metric type $<\cdot, \cdot > = < \cdot, \cdot >_R + 2 dudv + H(x,u) du^2$ (where $<\cdot, \cdot >_R$ is a Riemannian metric on $M$ and $H:M \times \R…
In 1962, Ehlers and Kundt conjectured that plane waves are the only class of complete Ricci-flat~\emph{pp}-waves, i.e.\ metrics on ${\mathbb R}^4$ of the form \[ ds^2=2du\,dv+dx^2+dy^2+H(x,y,u)du^2\,. \] Recently, Flores and S\'{a}nchez…
We define the notion of geodesic completeness for semi-Riemannian metrics of low regularity in the framework of the geometric theory of generalized functions. We then show completeness of a wide class of impulsive gravitational wave…
We investigate a class of gravitational pp-waves which represent the exterior vacuum field of spinning particles moving with the speed of light. Such exact spacetimes are described by the original Brinkmann form of the pp-wave metric…
These notes provide a student-friendly introduction to the theory of gravitational waves in full, non-linear general relativity (GR). We aim for a balance between physical intuition and mathematical rigor and cover topics such as the…
We consider restrictions placed by geodesic completeness on spacetimes possessing a null parallel vector field, the so-called Brinkmann spacetimes. This class of spacetimes includes important idealized gravitational wave models in General…
The geometric properties of spacetimes representing expanding impulsive gravitational waves, propagating on a flat background and generated by snapped cosmic strings, are studied. The construction of the line element is reviewed, and…
We investigate a class of impulsive gravitational waves which propagate either in Minkowski or in the (anti-)de Sitter background. These waves are constructed as impulsive members of the Kundt class $P(\Lambda)$ of non-twisting,…
We present a coordinate system for a general impulsive gravitational pp - wave in vacuum in which the metric is explicitly continuous, synchronous and "transverse". Also, it is more appropriate for investigation of particle motions.
A new class of exact solutions is presented which describes impulsive waves propagating in the Nariai universe. It is constructed using a six-dimensional embedding formalism adapted to the background. Due to the topology of the latter, the…
Penrose's identification with warp provides the general framework for constructing the continuous form of impulsive gravitational wave metrics. We present the 2-component spinor formalism for the derivation of the full family of impulsive…
We generalize our previous linear result [1] in obtaining gravitational waves from our piecewise flat model for gravity in 3+1 dimensions to exact piecewise flat configurations describing exact planar gravitational waves. We show explicitly…
Let $M = M_0 \times \R^2$ be a pp--wave type spacetime endowed with the metric $<\cdot,\cdot>_z = <\cdot,\cdot>_x + 2 du dv + H(x,u) du^2$, where $(M_0, <\cdot,\cdot>_x) $ is any Riemannian manifold and $H(x,u)$ an arbitrary function. We…
We describe impulsive gravitational pp-waves entirely in the distributional picture. Applying Colombeau's nonlinear framework of generalized functions we handle the formally ill-defined products of distributions which enter the geodesic as…
We explicitly demonstrate that the known solutions for expanding impulsive spherical gravitational waves that have been obtained by a "cut and paste" method may be considered to be impulsive limits of the Robinson-Trautman vacuum type N…
A complete family of non-expanding impulsive waves in spacetimes which are the direct product of two 2-spaces of constant curvature is presented. In addition to previously investigated impulses in Minkowski, (anti-)Nariai and…
In this paper, we initiate the rigorous mathematical study of the problem of impulsive gravitational spacetime waves. We construct such spacetimes as solutions to the characteristic initial value problem of the Einstein vacuum equations…
Exact solutions exist which describe impulsive gravitational waves propagating in Minkowski, de Sitter, or anti-de Sitter universes. These may be either nonexpanding or expanding. Both cases in each background are reviewed here from a…
We investigate motion of test particles in exact spacetimes with an expanding impulsive gravitational wave which propagates in Minkowski, de Sitter or anti-de Sitter universe. Using the continuous form of these metrics we derive explicit…