Variations of the Energy of Free Particles in the pp-Wave Spacetimes

We consider the action of exact plane gravitational waves, or pp-waves, on free particles. The analysis is carried out by investigating the variations of the geodesic trajectories of the particles, before and after the passage of the wave. The initial velocities of the particles are non-vanishing. W...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inUniverse (Basel) Vol. 4; no. 7; p. 74
Main Authors Maluf, José, da Rocha-Neto, José, Ulhoa, Sérgio, Carneiro, Fernando
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.07.2018
Subjects
Energy
free particles and gravitational plane waves
gravitational energy transfer
Gravitational waves
Gravity
Kinetic energy
non-linear gravitational waves
Particulates
Spacetime
Theory of relativity
variations of the gravitational energy
Velocity
United Kingdom > UK
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Summary:We consider the action of exact plane gravitational waves, or pp-waves, on free particles. The analysis is carried out by investigating the variations of the geodesic trajectories of the particles, before and after the passage of the wave. The initial velocities of the particles are non-vanishing. We evaluate numerically the kinetic energy per unit mass of the free particles and obtain interesting, quasi-periodic behavior of the variations of the kinetic energy with respect to the widthλof the Gaussian that represents the wave. The variation of the energy of the free particle is expected to be exactly minus the variation of the energy of the gravitational field, and therefore provides an estimation of the local variation of the gravitational energy. The investigation is carried out in the context of short bursts of gravitational waves, and of waves described by normalized Gaussians, that yield impulsive waves in a certain limit.
ISSN:2218-1997
2218-1997
DOI:10.3390/universe4070074