Vacuum Plane Waves; Cartan Invariants and physical interpretation

Abstract

As an application of the Cartan invariants obtained using the Karlhede algorithm, we study a simple subclass of the PP-wave spacetimes, the gravitational plane waves. We provide an invariant classification of these spacetimes and then study a few notable subcases: the linearly polarized plane waves, the weak-field circularly polarized waves, and another class of plane waves found by imposing conditions on the set of invariants. As we study these spacetimes we relate the invariant structure (i.e., Cartan scalars) to the physical description of these spacetimes using the geodesic deviation equations relative to timelike geodesic observers.