Vacuum Kundt Waves

Abstract

We discuss the invariant classification of vacuum Kundt waves using the Cartan-Karlhede algorithm, and the upper bound on the number of iterations of the Karlhede algorithm to classify the vacuum Kundt waves. By choosing a particular coordinate system we partially construct the canonical coframe used in the classification to study the functional dependence of the invariants arising at each iteration of the algorithm. We provide a new upper bound $q\le 4$ and show this bound is sharp by analyzing the subclass of Kundt waves with invariant count beginning with (0,1,...) to show that the class with invariant count $(0,1,3,4,4)$ exists. This class of vacuum Kundt waves is shown to be unique as the only set of metrics requiring the fourth covariant derivatives of the curvature. We conclude with an invariant classification of the vacuum Kundt waves using a suite of invariants.

30 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Gravitational waves in Poincaré gauge gravity theory
• Physical interpretation of Kundt spacetimes using geodesic deviation
• Gravitational waves in metric-affine gravity theory
• Differential invariants of Kundt spacetimes
• Killing Tensors in Koutras-McIntosh Spacetimes
• Locally Homogeneous Kundt Triples and CSI Metrics
• Differential invariants of Kundt waves
• Dimension of the isometry group in type N vacuum solutions: an IDEAL approach