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A Note on the Symmetries of the Gravitational Field of a Massless Particle

P. C. Aichelburg·H. Balasin
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Abstract

It is shown that the metric of a massless particle obtained from boosting the Schwarzschild metric to the velocity of light, has four Killing vectors corresponding to an $E(2)\times \RR$ symmetry-group. This is in agreement with the expectations based on flat-space kinematics but is in contrast to previous statements in the literature \cite{Schueck}. Moreover, it also goes beyond the general Jordan-Ehlers-Kundt-(JEK)-classification of gravitational pp-waves as given in \cite{JEK}.

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P. C. Aichelburg, H. Balasin. 1994-07-15. A Note on the Symmetries of the Gravitational Field of a Massless Particle. https://doi.org/10.1088/0264-9381%2F11%2F10%2F001

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