All spacetimes with vanishing curvature invariants

All Lorentzian spacetimes with vanishing invariants constructed from the Riemann tensor and its covariant derivatives are determined. A subclass of the Kundt spacetimes results and we display the corresponding metrics in local coordinates. Some potential applications of these spacetimes are discussed.

[1]  C. Mcintosh,et al.  A Complete Set of Riemann Invariants , 1997 .

[2]  J. Maldacena The Large-N Limit of Superconformal Field Theories and Supergravity , 1997, hep-th/9711200.

[3]  W. Kundt The plane-fronted gravitational waves , 1961 .

[4]  J. Maldacena,et al.  Strings in flat space and pp waves from N = 4 Super Yang Mills , 2002 .

[5]  Exactly solvable model of superstring in plane wave Ramond-Ramond background , 2002, hep-th/0202109.

[6]  Curvature invariants in type-III spacetimes , 1998, gr-qc/9906121.

[7]  L. Randall,et al.  An Alternative to compactification , 1999, hep-th/9906064.

[8]  G. Gibbons Quantized fields propagating in plane-wave spacetimes , 1975 .

[9]  G. Ludwig,et al.  Conformally Ricci flat pure radiation metrics , 1997 .

[10]  W. Seixas Extensions to the computer-aided classification of the Ricci tensor , 1991 .

[11]  J. Plebański THE ALGEBRAIC STRUCTURE OF THE TENSOR OF MATTER , 1964 .

[12]  P. Meessen A Small Note on PP-Wave Vacua in 6 and 5 Dimensions , 2001, hep-th/0111031.

[13]  M. Flato,et al.  Differential Geometry and Relativity , 1976 .

[14]  D. Amati,et al.  Nonperturbative Computation of the Weyl Anomaly for a Class of Nontrivial Backgrounds , 1989 .

[15]  TWILIGHT FOR THE ENERGY CONDITIONS , 2002, gr-qc/0205066.

[16]  Savas Dimopoulos,et al.  The Hierarchy problem and new dimensions at a millimeter , 1998, hep-ph/9803315.

[17]  P. Wils Homogeneous and conformally Ricci flat pure radiation fields , 1989 .

[18]  V. Rubakov,et al.  Extra space-time dimensions: Towards a solution to the cosmological constant problem , 1983 .

[19]  S. Deser Plane waves do not polarize the vacuum , 1975 .

[20]  Penrose limits and maximal supersymmetry , 2002, hep-th/0201081.

[21]  I. Robinson,et al.  Plane‐fronted gravitational and electromagnetic waves in spaces with cosmological constant , 1985 .

[22]  G. Ludwig Space–times with geodesic, shear‐free, twist‐free, nonexpanding rays. II , 1981 .

[23]  K. Sfetsos Gauging a non-semi-simple WZW model , 1993, hep-th/9311010.

[24]  G. Ludwig Space‐times with geodesic, shearfree, twistfree, nonexpanding rays , 1980 .

[25]  W. Rindler,et al.  Exact Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations. , 1971 .

[26]  M. Carmeli Group Theory And General Relativity , 1977 .

[27]  Penrose limits, supergravity and brane dynamics , 2002, hep-th/0202111.

[28]  Strings in flat space and pp waves from ${\cal N}=4$ Super Yang Mills , 2002, hep-th/0202021.

[29]  C. Mcintosh,et al.  The classification of the Ricci and Plebański tensors in general relativity using Newman–Penrose formalism , 1981 .

[30]  L. Witten Invariants of General Relativity and the Classification of Spaces , 1959 .

[31]  J. Kowalski-Glikman Positive energy theorem and vacuum states for the Einstein-Maxwell system☆ , 1985 .

[32]  G W Gibbons LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Two-loop and all-loop finite 4-metrics , 1999 .

[33]  Malcolm MacCallum,et al.  Exact Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations , 2003 .

[34]  R. R. Metsaev Type IIB Green-Schwarz superstring in plane wave Ramond-Ramond background , 2002 .

[35]  Plane wave limits and T-duality , 2000, hep-th/0005061.

[36]  J. Carminati,et al.  On the problem of algebraic completeness for the invariants of the Riemann tensor. III. , 2002 .

[37]  M. Carmeli Group Theory and General Relativity: Representations of the Lorentz Group and Their Applications to the Gravitational Field , 1977 .

[38]  G. Sneddon The identities of the algebraic invariants of the four-dimensional Riemann tensor , 1996 .

[39]  M. MacCallum,et al.  Computer-aided classification of the Ricci tensor in general relativity , 1990 .

[40]  Horowitz,et al.  Spacetime singularities in string theory. , 1990, Physical review letters.

[41]  L. Randall,et al.  A Large mass hierarchy from a small extra dimension , 1999, hep-ph/9905221.

[42]  A new maximally supersymmetric background of IIB superstring theory , 2001, hep-th/0110242.

[43]  Andreas Koutras,et al.  A metric with no symmetries or invariants , 1996 .