On the polarization of gravitational waves. (English) Zbl 1217.83027

Vilasi, Gaetano

Mladenov, Ivaïlo M. (ed.), Proceedings of the 9th international conference on geometry, integrability and quantization, Sts. Constantine and Elena, Bulgaria, June 8–13, 2007. Sofia: Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (ISBN 978-954-8495-42-4/pbk). 320-333 (2008).

A gravitational field that is invariant with respect to a non-Abelian two-dimensional Lie algebra whose generator is light like is characterized from a geometric point of view. It represents a spin-1 gravitational wave (of Petrov type \(N\)) propagating at light velocity. It is weaker than a spin-2 gravitational wave. Its metric in the harmonic coordinates has off-diagonal form and its (non-globally square integrable spin-1) perturbation has only one index in the plane orthogonal to the propagation direction. Non-singular spin-1 gravitational waves are those with a matter source.
Spin-1 gravitational waves are also analyzed using the gravitoelectromagnetic perspective, and the photon-photon gravitational interaction is also studied.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1154.17001].

Reviewer: Alena Pravdová (Praha)

MSC:

83C35	Gravitational waves
83C20	Classes of solutions; algebraically special solutions, metrics with symmetries for problems in general relativity and gravitational theory
83C25	Approximation procedures, weak fields in general relativity and gravitational theory
83C50	Electromagnetic fields in general relativity and gravitational theory
83C10	Equations of motion in general relativity and gravitational theory

Keywords:

spin-1 gravitational waves; Petrov type N; gravitoelectromagnetic