Locally homogeneous pp-waves

Abstract

We show that every n-dimensional locally homogeneous pp-wave is a plane wave, provided it is indecomposable and its curvature operator, when acting on $2$-forms, has rank greater than one. As a consequence we obtain that indecomposable, Ricci-flat locally homogeneous pp-waves are plane waves. This generalises a classical result by Jordan, Ehlers and Kundt in dimension 4. Several examples show that our assumptions on indecomposability and the rank of the curvature are essential.