English

Electromagnetic memory in arbitrary curved space-times

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2023-08-02 v3 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

The gravitational memory effect and its electromagnetic (EM) analog are potential probes in the strong gravity regime. In the literature, this effect is derived for static observers at asymptotic infinity. While this is a physically consistent approach, it restricts the space-time geometries for which one can obtain the EM memory effect. To circumvent this, we evaluate the EM memory effect for comoving observers (defined by the 4-velocity uμu_{\mu}) in arbitrary curved space-times. Using the covariant approach, we split Maxwell's equations into two parts -- projected parallel to the 4-velocity uμu_{\mu} and into the 3-space orthogonal to uμu_{\mu}. Further splitting the equations into 1+1+21+1+2-form, we obtain \emph{master equation} for the EM memory in an arbitrary curved space-time. We provide a geometrical understanding of the contributions to the memory effect. We then obtain EM memory for specific space-time geometries and discuss the salient features.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2301.11772,
  title  = {Electromagnetic memory in arbitrary curved space-times},
  author = {Susmita Jana and S. Shankaranarayanan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.11772},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

31 pages, 2 figures, version 2: corrected the Latex errors related to figures; version 3: added few more references, accepted for publication in PRD

R2 v1 2026-06-28T08:23:26.811Z