Colliding Plane Waves in String Theory

TL;DR

This paper constructs new colliding plane wave solutions in higher-dimensional string-inspired gravity theories, emphasizing junction conditions and demonstrating that such solutions develop late-time curvature singularities, supporting a generalized Tipler's theorem.

Contribution

It introduces a broad class of new solutions in higher-dimensional string theory with dilaton and flux fields, extending known CPW solutions and analyzing their singularity behavior.

Findings

Late-time curvature singularities always develop in the solutions

The solutions include known CPW solutions as special cases

Supports a generalized Tipler's theorem in higher-dimensional supergravity

Abstract

We construct colliding plane wave solutions in higher dimensional gravity theory with dilaton and higher form flux, which appears naturally in the low energy theory of string theory. Especially, the role of the junction condition in constructing the solutions is emphasized. Our results not only include the previously known CPW solutions, but also provide a wide class of new solutions that is not known in the literature before. We find that late time curvature singularity is always developed for the solutions we obtained in this paper. This supports the generalized version of Tipler's theorem in higher dimensional supergravity.