Related papers: Geodesics in nonexpanding impulsive gravitational …
We investigate the geodesics in the entire class of nonexpanding impulsive gravitational waves propagating in an (anti-)de Sitter universe using the distributional form of the metric. Employing a 5-dimensional embedding formalism and a…
We study geodesics in the complete family of nonexpanding impulsive gravitational waves propagating in spaces of constant curvature, that is Minkowski, de Sitter and anti-de Sitter universes. Employing the continuous form of the metric we…
We study geodesics in the complete family of expanding impulsive gravitational waves propagating in spaces of constant curvature, that is Minkowski, de Sitter and anti-de Sitter universes. Employing the continuous form of the metric 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 study geodesic motion in expanding spherical impulsive gravitational waves propagating in a Minkowski background. Employing the continuous form of the metric we find and examine a large family of geometrically preferred geodesics. For…
The geometry of impulsive pp-waves is explored via the analysis of the geodesic and geodesic deviation equation using the distributional form of the metric. The geodesic equation involves formally ill-defined products of distributions due…
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…
The geodesic as well as the geodesic deviation equation for impulsive gravitational waves involve highly singular products of distributions $(\theta\de$, $\theta^2\de$, $\de^2$). A solution concept for these equations based on embedding the…
We consider a class of exact solutions which represent nonexpanding impulsive waves in backgrounds with nonzero cosmological constant. Using a convenient 5-dimensional formalism it is shown that these spacetimes admit at least three global…
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…
Impulsive gravitational waves are theoretical models of short but violent bursts of gravitational radiation. They are commonly described by two distinct spacetime metrics, one of local Lipschitz regularity, the other one even…
This work reports on the construction of a nonlinear distributional geometry (in the sense of Colombeau's special setting) and its applications to general relativity with a special focus on the distributional description of impulsive…
Discontinuities in non linear field theories propagate through null geodesics in an effective metric that depends on its dynamics and on the background geometry. Once information of the geometry of the universe comes mostly from photons,…
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…
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,…
Exact solutions for nonexpanding impulsive waves in a background with nonzero cosmological constant are constructed using a `cut and paste' method. These solutions are presented using a unified approach which covers the cases of de Sitter,…
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…
Gravitational waves with parallel rays are known to have remarkable properties: Their orbit space of null rays possesses the structure of a non-relativistic spacetime of codimension-one. Their geodesics are in one-to-one correspondence with…
In a suitably chosen essentially unique frame tied to a given observer in a general spacetime, the equation of geodesic deviation can be decomposed into a sum of terms describing specific effects: isotropic (background) motions associated…
Impulsive gravitational waves in Minkowski space were introduced by Roger Penrose at the end of the 1960s, and have been widely studied over the decades. Here we focus on nonexpanding waves which later have been generalized to impulses…