English

Spinning Particles in Twisted Gravitational Wave Spacetimes

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2021-01-19 v6

Abstract

Twisted gravitational waves (TGWs) are nonplanar waves with twisted rays that move along a fixed direction in space. We study further the physical characteristics of a recent class of Ricci-flat solutions of general relativity representing TGWs with wave fronts that have negative Gaussian curvature. In particular, we investigate the influence of TGWs on the polarization of test electromagnetic waves and on the motion of classical spinning test particles in such radiation fields. To distinguish the polarization effects of twisted waves from plane waves, we examine the theoretical possibility of existence of spin-twist coupling and show that this interaction is generally consistent with our results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1805.07080,
  title  = {Spinning Particles in Twisted Gravitational Wave Spacetimes},
  author = {Donato Bini and Carmen Chicone and Bahram Mashhoon and Kjell Rosquist},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.07080},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

27 pages, RevTex macros, v2: typos corrected, reference added, v3: slightly expanded version, v4: new Appendix A, references added; v5: reference added, matches published version; v6: typos corrected in the sentence following Eq. (C7)

R2 v1 2026-06-23T01:59:37.229Z