New examples of sandwich gravitational waves and their impulsive limit

TL;DR

This paper constructs new examples of sandwich gravitational waves from homogeneous pp vacuum solutions, analyzes particle motions to demonstrate caustic properties, and shows that impulsive limits lead to identical particle behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces novel sandwich gravitational wave solutions and explores their impulsive limits, revealing consistent particle motion characteristics across different initial conditions.

Findings

Demonstrated caustic properties of sandwich waves

Explicitly calculated free test particle motions

Showed impulsive limits yield identical particle behaviors

Abstract

Non-standard sandwich gravitational waves are constructed from the homogeneous pp vacuum solution and the motions of free test particles in the space-times are calculated explicitly. They demonstrate the caustic property of sandwich waves. By performing limits to impulsive gravitational wave it is demonstrated that the resulting particle motions are identical regardless of the ''initial'' sandwich.