Geodesics in spacetimes with expanding impulsive gravitational waves

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of geodesics in expanding impulsive gravitational waves within Minkowski space, providing detailed analysis and physical interpretation for specific symmetric cases involving cosmic strings.

Contribution

It introduces a continuous metric approach to analyze geodesics in expanding impulsive gravitational waves, including a detailed study of axially symmetric cases with cosmic strings.

Findings

Identification of a large family of geometrically preferred geodesics

Physical interpretation of test particle motion in specific impulsive wave scenarios

Analysis of geodesic behavior in axially symmetric spacetimes with cosmic strings

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.