The memory effect in impulsive plane waves: comments, corrections, clarifications

Abstract

Recently the 'memory effect' has been studied in plane gravitational waves and, in particular, in impulsive plane waves. Based on an analysis of the particle motion (mainly in Baldwin-Jeffery-Rosen coordinates) a 'velocity memory effect' is claimed to be found in [P.-M. Zhang, C. Duval, and P. A. Horvathy. Memory effect for impulsive gravitational waves. Classical Quantum Gravity, 35(6):065011, 20, 2018]. Here we point out a conceptual mistake in this account and employ earlier works to explain how to correctly derive the particle motion and how to correctly deal with the notorious distributional Brinkmann form of the metric and its relation to the continuous Rosen form.