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arXiv · 0705.0228

Canonical Formulation of pp-waves

Herbert Balasin·Peter Aichelburg
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Abstract

We construct a Hamiltonian formulation for the class of plane-fronted gravitational waves with parallel rays (pp-waves). Because of the existence of a light-like Killing vector, the dynamics is effectively reduced to a 2+1 evolution with "time" chosen to be light-like. In spite of the vanishing action this allows us to geometrically identify a symplectic form as well as dynamical Hamiltonian, thus casting the system into canonical form.

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Herbert Balasin, Peter Aichelburg. 2007-05-02. Canonical Formulation of pp-waves. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10714-007-0452-0

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