Rigidity of geodesic completeness in the Brinkmann class of gravitational wave spacetimes

Abstract

We consider restrictions placed by geodesic completeness on spacetimes possessing a null parallel vector field, the so-called Brinkmann spacetimes. This class of spacetimes includes important idealized gravitational wave models in General Relativity, namely the plane-fronted waves with parallel rays, or pp-waves, which in turn have been intensely and fruitfully studied in the mathematical and physical literatures for over half a century. More concretely, we prove a restricted version of a conjectural analogue for Brinkmann spacetimes of a rigidity result obtained by M.T. Anderson for stationary spacetimes. We also highlight its relation with a long-standing 1962 conjecture by Ehlers and Kundt. Indeed, it turns out that the subclass of Brinkmann spacetimes we consider in our main theorem is enough to settle an important special case of the Ehlers-Kundt conjecture in terms of the well known class of Cahen-Wallach spaces.