Effects of gravitational waves on electromagnetic fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates how gravitational waves influence electromagnetic fields by modeling their interaction as an effective medium, revealing new effective currents through solutions to Maxwell's equations in measurable detector frames.

Contribution

It introduces a framework using Fermi coordinates to analyze electromagnetic-gravitational interactions and derives new effective currents caused by gravitational waves.

Findings

Gravitational waves induce effective currents in electromagnetic fields.

The interaction can be described as an electromagnetic medium effect.

Solutions to Maxwell's equations show measurable impacts on electromagnetic configurations.

Abstract

We focus on the interaction of a plane gravitational wave with electromagnetic fields and we describe this interaction in the proper detector frame where, thanks to the introduction of Fermi coordinates, it is possible to refer to directly measurable quantities. The presence of a gravitational field can be addressed in terms of an effective electromagnetic medium and, within this framework, we show that the coupling of pre-existing electromagnetic fields with the gravitational field of the wave gives rise to new effective currents. To assess the impact of these effects, we solve Maxwell's equations for some standard configurations of the electric and magnetic fields.