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Geodesics in spacetimes with expanding impulsive gravitational waves

Jiri Podolsky·Roland Steinbauer
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Abstract

We study geodesic motion in expanding spherical impulsive gravitational waves propagating in a Minkowski background. Employing the continuous form of the metric we find and examine a large family of geometrically preferred geodesics. For the special class of axially symmetric spacetimes with the spherical impulse generated by a snapping cosmic string we give a detailed physical interpretation of the motion of test particles.

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Jiri Podolsky, Roland Steinbauer. 2003-04-10. Geodesics in spacetimes with expanding impulsive gravitational waves. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.67.064013

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