Pure and gravitational radiation

Abstract

The well-known treatment of asymptotically flat vacuum fields is adapted to pure radiation fields. In this approach we find a natural normalization of the radiation null vector. The energy balance at null infinity shows that the mass loss results from a linear superposition of the pure and the gravitational radiation parts. By transformation to Bondi-Sachs coordinates the Kinnersley photon rocket is found to be the only axisymmetric Robinson-Trautman pure radiation solution without gravitational radiation.