Conformally related vacuum gravitational waves and their symmetries

Abstract

Abstract A special conformal transformation which carries a vacuum gravitational wave into another vacuum one is built by using Möbius-redefined time. It can either transform a globally defined vacuum wave into a vacuum sandwich wave, or carry the gravitational wave into itself. The first type, illustrated by linearly and circularly polarised vacuum plane gravitational waves, permutes the symmetries and the geodesics. Our second type is a pp wave with conformal O(1, 2) symmetry. An example inspired by molecular physics which seems to have escaped attention so far is an anisotropic generalisation of the familiar inverse-square profile and is reminiscent of Aichelburg-Sexl ultraboosts. The particle can escape, or perform circular periodic motion, or fall into the singularity.