Related papers: On the geometry of impulsive gravitational waves
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…
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…
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…
We investigate all geodesics in the entire class of nonexpanding impulsive gravitational waves propagating in an (anti-)de Sitter universe using the distributional metric. We extend the regularization approach of part I, [SSLP16] to a full…
We consider particle trajectories in the gravitational field of an impulsive pp-wave. Due to the distributional character of the wave profile one inevitably encounters an ambiguous point value $\theta(0)$. We show that this ambiguity may be…
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…
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…
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.
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,…
We consider the geodesic equation in impulsive pp-wave space-times in Rosen form, where the metric is of Lipschitz regularity. We prove that the geodesics (in the sense of Caratheodory) are actually continuously differentiable, thereby…
This paper is a tutorial that demonstrates various methods from the Colombeau theory of generalized functions in the context of semilinear wave equations. The Colombeau generalized functions constitute differential algebras that contain the…
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…
Exact plane gravitational radiation fields are presented within the framework of general relativity and their properties are described. The physics of nonlinear elliptically polarized plane gravitational waves is developed in close analogy…
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…
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…
Impulsive pp-waves are commonly described either by a distributional spacetime metric or, alternatively, by a continuous one. The transformation $T$ relating these forms clearly has to be discontinuous, which causes two basic problems:…
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…
A general linear gauge-invariant equation for dispersive gravitational waves (GWs) propagating in matter is derived. This equation describes, on the same footing, both the usual tensor modes and the gravitational modes strongly coupled with…
A special conformal transformation which carries a vacuum gravitational wave into another vacuum one is built by using M\"obius-redefined time. It can either transform a globally defined vacuum wave into a vacuum sandwich wave, or carry the…
We propose a generic, phenomenological approach to modifying the dispersion of gravitational waves, independent of corrections to the generation mechanism. This model-independent approach encapsulates all previously proposed…