Plane Waves and Vacuum Interpolation

TL;DR

This paper presents a family of exactly solvable string backgrounds in supergravity that interpolate between Minkowski space and a maximally supersymmetric plane wave, with analysis of their boundary properties.

Contribution

It introduces a new class of time-dependent plane wave solutions in supergravity that smoothly connect flat space to maximally supersymmetric backgrounds.

Findings

Constructed explicit interpolating solutions in d=4, N=2 supergravity.

Analyzed the conformal boundary of these solutions.

Results can be extended to higher dimensions.

Abstract

A 1/2-BPS family of time dependent plane wave spacetimes which give rise to exactly solvable string backgrounds is presented. In particular a solution which interpolates between Minkowski spacetime and the maximally supersymmetric homogeneous plane wave along a timelike direction is analyzed. We work in d=4, N=2 supergravity, but the results can be easily extended to d=10,11. The conformal boundary of a particular class of solutions is studied.