Twisted Gravitational Waves in the Presence of a Cosmological Constant
Abstract
We find exact nonlinear solutions of general relativity that represent twisted gravitational waves (TGWs) in the presence of a cosmological constant. A TGW is a nonplanar wave propagating along a fixed spatial direction with a null Killing wave vector that has a nonzero twist tensor. The solutions all turn out to have wave fronts with negative Gaussian curvature. Among the classes of solutions presented in this paper, we find a unique class of simple conformally flat TGWs that is due to the presence of a negative cosmological constant and therefore represents part of anti-de Sitter spacetime. The properties of this special solution are studied in detail.
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