Collision of Electromagnetic Shock Waves Coupled with Axion Waves: An Example

TL;DR

This paper presents an exact, singularity-free solution describing the collision of electromagnetic and axion plane waves, extending the Bell-Szekeres solution to include axion coupling.

Contribution

It introduces a novel exact solution for colliding electromagnetic and axion waves, generalizing the Bell-Szekeres solution with axion coupling effects.

Findings

Collision results in a singularity-free interaction region

The solution generalizes Bell-Szekeres with axion coupling

Initial data on null surfaces is well-defined

Abstract

We present an exact solution that describes collision of electromagnetic shock waves coupled with axion plane waves. The axion has a rather special coupling to the cross polarization term of the metric. The initial data on the null surfaces is well-defined and collision results in a singularity free interaction region. Our solution is a generalization of the Bell-Szekeres solution in the presence of an axion field.