Plane Fronted Limit of Spherical Electromagnetic and Gravitational Waves

Abstract

We demonstrate how plane fronted waves with colliding wave fronts are the asymptotic limit of spherical electromagnetic and gravitational waves. In the case of the electromagnetic waves we utilize Bateman's representation of radiative solutions of Maxwell's vacuum field equations. The gravitational case involves a novel form of the radiative Robinson--Trautman solutions of Einstein's vacuum field equations.

5 pages

References in corpus (2)

• Gravitational Waves with Colliding or Non--Colliding Wave Fronts
• Null Hypersurfaces in de Sitter and anti-de Sitter Cosmologies

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Plane fronted electromagnetic waves and an asymptotic limit of Liénard--Wiechert fields
• Colliding Plane Fronted Waves and a Gravito--Electromagnetic Searchlight