Plane light-like shells and impulsive gravitational waves in scalar-tensor theories of gravity

Abstract

We study gravitational plane impulsive waves and electromagnetic shock waves in a scalar-tensor theory of gravity of the Brans-Dicke type. In vacuum, we present an exact solution of the Brans-Dicke field equations and give an example in which a plane impulsive gravitational wave and a null shell of matter coexist on the same hypersurface. In the homogenous case, we characterize them by their surface energy density and wave amplitude and discuss the inhomogenous case. We also give an exact solution of the Brans-Dicke field equations in the electrovacuum case which admits a true curvature singularity and use it to built an example where a plane impulsive gravitational wave and an electromagnetic shock wave have the same null hypersurface as history of their wavefronts and propagate independently and decoupled from a null shell of matter. This last solution is shown to correspond to the spacetime describing the interaction region resulting from the collision of two electromagnetic shock waves leading to the formation of two gravitational impulsive waves. The properties of this solution are discussed and compared to those of the Bell-Szekeres solution of general relativity.