Twisted Gravitational Waves in the Presence of a Cosmological Constant
arXiv:1904.01249 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.100.084027
Abstract
We find exact nonlinear solutions of general relativity that represent twisted gravitational waves (TGWs) in the presence of a cosmological constant. A TGW is a nonplanar wave propagating along a fixed spatial direction with a null Killing wave vector that has a nonzero twist tensor. The solutions all turn out to have wave fronts with negative Gaussian curvature. Among the classes of solutions presented in this paper, we find a unique class of simple conformally flat TGWs that is due to the presence of a negative cosmological constant and therefore represents part of anti-de Sitter spacetime. The properties of this special solution are studied in detail.
30 pages, 1 figure; v2: Section V improved, reference added; v3: revised version, figures added; v4: minor corrections, matches published version