Plane fronted gravitational waves in Lovelock-Yang-Mills theory

Abstract

We obtain plane fronted gravitational waves (PFGWs) in arbitrary dimension in Lovelock gravity, to any order in the Riemann tensor. We exhibit pure gravity as well as Lovelock-Yang-Mills PFGWs. Lovelock-Maxwell and $pp$ waves arise as particular cases. The electrovac solutions trivially satisfy the Lovelock-Born-Infeld field equations. The peculiarities that arise in degenerate Lovelock theories are also analyzed.