Abstract
This paper is a contribution to the theory of pure radiation in General Relativity. It gives a survey of the radiation fields which possess a twistfree and non-expanding null congruence, and characterizes their subclasses of different Petrov type by geometrical properties. The term “plane-fronted”, intuitive inMaxwell's theory, is generalized toEinstein's theory.
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The author is indebted to the members of Professor P.Jordan's theoretical seminar at Hamburg, especially to Dr. J.Ehlers, for many clarifying discussions. Special thanks are due to Dr. I.Robinson whose advice in the beginning of this work was of essential help. Likewise Dr. A.Trautman's unpublished formulae for the Ricci tensor are gratefully acknowledged. This work was supported by the Bundesatomministerium and by the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz.
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Kundt, W. The plane-fronted gravitational waves. Z. Physik 163, 77–86 (1961). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01328918
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01328918