Travelling waves in expanding spatially homogeneous space–times

Abstract

Some classes of the so-called ‘travelling wave’ solutions of Einstein and Einstein–Maxwell equations in general relativity and of dynamical equations for massless bosonic fields in string gravity in four and higher dimensions are presented. Similarly to the well known plane-fronted waves with parallel rays (pp-waves), these travelling wave solutions may depend on arbitrary functions of a null coordinate which determine the arbitrary profiles and polarizations of the waves. However, in contrast with pp-waves, these waves do not admit the null Killing vector fields and can exist in some curved (expanding and spatially homogeneous) background space–times, where these waves propagate in certain directions without any scattering. Mathematically, some of these classes of solutions arise as the fixed points of Kramer–Neugebauer transformations for hyperbolic integrable reductions of the above mentioned field equations or, in other cases, after imposing the ansatz that these waves do not change the part of the spatial metric transverse to the direction of wave propagation. It is worth noting that the strikingly simple forms of all the solutions presented prospectively make possible the consideration of the nonlinear interaction of these waves with the background curvature and singularities, as well as the collision of such wave pulses with solitons or with each other in the backgrounds where such travelling waves may exist.