Scattering of Spinning Test Particles by Plane Gravitational and Electromagnetic Waves

Abstract

The Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon (MPD) equations for the motion of electrically neutral massive spinning particles are analysed, in the pole-dipole approximation, in an Einstein-Maxwell plane-wave background spacetime. By exploiting the high symmetry of such spacetimes these equations are reduced to a system of tractable ordinary differential equations. Classes of exact solutions are given, corresponding to particular initial conditions for the directions of the particle spin relative to the direction of the propagating background fields. For Einstein-Maxwell pulses a scattering cross section is defined that reduces in certain limits to those associated with the scattering of scalar and Dirac particles based on classical and quantum field theoretic techniques. The relative simplicity of the MPD approach and its use of macroscopic spin distributions suggests that it may have advantages in those astrophysical situations that involve strong classical gravitational and electromagnetic environments.

Submitted to Classical and Quantum Gravity. 12 pages

References in corpus (1)

• On the motion of spinning test particles in plane gravitational waves

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Dynamics of Extended Spinning Masses in a Gravitational Field
• The Dynamics of a Classical Spinning Particle in Vaidya Space-Time
• Perturbation Method for Classical Spinning Particle Motion: I. Kerr Space-Time
• Relativistic Top Deviation Equation and Gravitational Waves
• An Analytic Perturbation Approach for Classical Spinning Particle Dynamics
• Spinning particle in an external linearized gravitational wave field
• Charged particles with spin in a gravitational wave and a uniform magnetic field
• Particle dynamics and deviation effects in the field of a strong electromagnetic wave
• Revisiting the dynamics of a charged spinning body in curved spacetime