Radiative fields in spacetimes with Minkowski and de Sitter asymptotics

TL;DR

This paper reviews the theory of gravitational radiation in asymptotically flat and de Sitter spacetimes, highlighting explicit radiative solutions, their asymptotic behavior, and recent advances in understanding radiative fields with a positive cosmological constant.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of radiative solutions in spacetimes with Minkowski and de Sitter asymptotics, including new insights into their asymptotic properties and explicit solutions like boost-rotation symmetric spacetimes.

Findings

Type N solutions approach de Sitter asymptotically

Robinson-Trautman solutions also tend to de Sitter universe

Radiative fields due to accelerated charges in de Sitter are characterized

Abstract

The classical Bondi-Penrose approach to the gravitational radiation theory in asymptotically flat spacetimes is recalled and recent advances in the proofs of the existence of such spacetimes are briefly reviewed. We then mention the unique role of the boost-rotation symmetric spacetimes, representing uniformly accelerated objects, as the only explicit radiative solutions known which are asymptotically flat; they are used as test beds in numerical relativity and approximation methods. The main part of the review is devoted to the examples of radiative fields in the vacuum spacetimes with positive cosmological constant. Type N solutions are analyzed by using the equation of geodesic deviation. Both these and Robinson-Trautman solutions of type II are shown to approach de Sitter universe asymptotically. Recent work on the the radiative fields due to uniformly accelerated charges in de Sitter spacetime ("cosmological Born's solutions") is reviewed and the properties of these fields are discussed with a perspective to characterize general features of radiative fields near a de Sitter-like infinity.