Reflection of electromagnetic waves from mixtures of plane gravitational and scalar waves

Abstract

We consider colliding wave packets consisting of hybrid mixtures of electromagnetic, gravitational, and scalar waves. Irrespective of the scalar field, the electromagnetic wave still reflects from the gravitational wave. Some reflection processes are given for different choice of packets in which the Coulomb-like component 2 vanishes. Exact solution for multiple reflection of an electromagnetic wave from successive impulsive gravitational waves is obtained in a closed form. It is shown that a successive sign flip in the Maxwell spinor arises as a result of encountering with an impulsive train (i.e. the Dirac's comb curvature) of gravitational waves. Such an observable effect may be helpful in the detection of gravitational wave bursts.

Scattering by an electromagnetic radiation field

“…This work has been further generalized in Refs. [11,12], where colliding wave packets consisting of hybrid mixtures of electromagnetic, gravitational and scalar waves in a strong field regime were considered. We will study first the geodesics of such a solution, which can be determined fully analytically, so that the first approximation approach to the scattering problem can be given a complete answer.…”

Search for gravitational waves through the electromagnetic Faraday rotation

“…Considerations of mixed profile GWs and sandwich waves will be the subject of a detailed analysis. Let us remark that encountering of an em wave with a series of succesive impulsive GWs has already been considered [10]. Search for GWs through the Faraday rotation due to a test em wave in a GW background has been considered by various authors [11], [12].…”

“…Let us remark that encountering of an em wave with a series of successive impulsive GWs has been considered already [10]. Search for GWs through the Faraday rotation due to a test em wave in a GW background has been considered by various authors [11,12].…”