No Arabic abstract
We generalize the classical junction conditions for constructing impulsive gravitational waves by the Penrose cut and paste method. Specifically, we study nonexpanding impulses which propagate in spaces of constant curvature with any value of the cosmological constant (that is Minkowski, de Sitter, or anti-de Sitter universes) when additional off-diagonal metric components are present. Such components encode a possible angular momentum of the ultra-relativistic source of the impulsive wave - the so called gyraton. We explicitly derive and analyze a specific transformation that relates the distributional form of the metric to a new form which is (Lipschitz) continuous. Such a transformation automatically implies an extended version of the Penrose junction conditions. It turns out that the conditions for identifying points of the background spacetime across the impulse are the same as in the original Penrose cut and paste construction, but their derivatives now directly represent the influence of the gyraton on the axial motion of test particles. Our results apply both for vacuum and nonvacuum solutions of Einsteins field equations, and can also be extended to other theories of gravity.
The junction conditions for General Relativity in the presence of domain walls with intrinsic spin are derived in three and higher dimensions. A stress tensor and a spin current can be defined just by requiring the existence of a well defined volume element instead of an induced metric, so as to allow for generic torsion sources. In general, when the torsion is localized on the domain wall, it is necessary to relax the continuity of the tangential components of the vielbein. In fact it is found that the spin current is proportional to the jump in the vielbein and the stress-energy tensor is proportional to the jump in the spin connection. The consistency of the junction conditions implies a constraint between the direction of flow of energy and the orientation of the spin. As an application, we derive the circularly symmetric solutions for both the rotating string with tension and the spinning dust string in three dimensions. The rotating string with tension generates a rotating truncated cone outside and a flat space-time with inevitable frame dragging inside. In the case of a string made of spinning dust, in opposition to the previous case no frame dragging is present inside, so that in this sense, the dragging effect can be shielded by considering spinning instead of rotating sources. Both solutions are consistently lifted as cylinders in the four-dimensional case.
We investigate a class of gravitational pp-waves which represent the exterior vacuum field of spinning particles moving with the speed of light. Such exact spacetimes are described by the original Brinkmann form of the pp-wave metric including the often neglected off-diagonal terms. We put emphasis on a clear physical and geometrical interpretation of these off-diagonal metric components. We explicitly analyze several new properties of these spacetimes associated with the spinning character of the source, such as rotational dragging of frames, geodesic deviation, impulsive limits and the corresponding behavior of geodesics.
We analyze junction conditions at a null or non-null hypersurface $Sigma$ in a large class of scalar-tensor theories in arbitrary $n(ge 3)$ dimensions. After showing that the metric and a scalar field must be continuous at $Sigma$ as the first junction conditions, we derive the second junctions conditions from the Einstein equations and the equation of motion for the scalar field. Subsequently, we study $C^1$ regular matching conditions as well as vacuum conditions at $Sigma$ both in the Jordan and Einstein frames. Our result suggests that the following configurations may be possible; (i) a vacuum thin-shell at null $Sigma$ in the Einstein frame, (ii) a vacuum thin-shell at null and non-null $Sigma$ in the Jordan frame, and (iii) a non-vacuum $C^1$ regular matching at null $Sigma$ in the Jordan frame. Lastly, we clarify the relations between the conditions for $C^1$ regularity and also for vacuum $Sigma$ in the Jordan and Einstein frames.
Impulsive gravitational waves in Minkowski space were introduced by Roger Penrose at the end of the 1960s, and have been widely studied over the decades. Here we focus on non-expanding waves which later have been generalised to impulses travelling in all constant-curvature backgrounds, that is also the (anti-)de Sitter universe. While Penroses original construction was based on his vivid geometric `scissors-and-paste approach in a flat background, until now a comparably powerful visualisation and understanding have been missing in the ${Lambda ot=0}$ case. In this work we provide such a picture: The (anti-)de Sitter hyperboloid is cut along the null wave surface, and the `halves are then re-attached with a suitable shift of their null generators across the wave surface. This special family of global null geodesics defines an appropriate comoving coordinate system, leading to the continuous form of the metric. Moreover, it provides a complete understanding of the nature of the Penrose junction conditions and their specific form. These findings shed light on recent discussions of the memory effect in impulsive waves.
In our previous paper [Phys. Rev. D 89 (2014) 124029], cited as [1], we attempted to find Robinson-Trautman-type solutions of Einsteins equations representing gyratonic sources (matter field in the form of an aligned null fluid, or particles propagating with the speed of light, with an additional internal spin). Unfortunately, by making a mistake in our calculations, we came to the wrong conclusion that such solutions do not exist. We are now correcting this mistake. In fact, this allows us to explicitly find a new large family of gyratonic solutions in the Robinson-Trautman class of spacetimes in any dimension greater than (or equal to) three. Gyratons thus exist in all twist-free and shear-free geometries, that is both in the expanding Robinson-Trautman and in the non-expanding Kundt classes of spacetimes. We derive, summarize and compare explicit canonical metrics for all such spacetimes in arbitrary dimension.