2004/05/31 by A. A. Coley, Alan A. Coley, Sigbjørn Hervik +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/21/24/005
published as Class.Quant.Grav. 21 (2004) 5759-5766 · 9 pages v3:revised version, to appear in CQG
arxiv created 2004/10/21 · openalex publication_date 2004/11/23 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2020/07/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In brane-world cosmology gravitational waves can propagate in the higher dimensions (i.e., in the `bulk'). In some appropriate regimes the bulk gravitational waves may be approximated by plane waves. We systematically study five-dimensional gravitational waves that are algebraically special and of type N. In the most physically relevant case the projected non-local stress tensor on the brane is formally equivalent to the energy-momentum tensor of a null fluid. Some exact solutions are studied to illustrate the features of these branes; in particular, we show explicity that any plane wave brane can be embedded into a 5-dimensional Siklos spacetime. More importantly, it is possible that in some appropriate regime the bulk can be approximated by gravitational plane waves and thus may act as initial conditions for the gravitational field in the bulk (thereby enabling the field equations to be integrated on the brane).