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Plane waves and spacelike infinity

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arxiv hep-th/0303044 v2 pith:RTNCV3J3 submitted 2003-03-06 hep-th gr-qc

Plane waves and spacelike infinity

classification hep-th gr-qc
keywords spacelikeinfinitycompletioncurvesplanecausalnullpoints
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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abstract

In an earlier paper, we showed that the causal boundary of any homogeneous plane wave satisfying the null convergence condition consists of a single null curve. In Einstein-Hilbert gravity, this would include any homogeneous plane wave satisfying the weak null energy condition. For conformally flat plane waves such as the Penrose limit of $AdS_5 \times S^5$, all spacelike curves that reach infinity also end on this boundary and the completion is Hausdorff. However, the more generic case (including, e.g., the Penrose limits of $AdS_4 \times S^7$ and $AdS_7 \times S^4$) is more complicated. In one natural topology, not all spacelike curves have limit points in the causal completion, indicating the need to introduce additional points at `spacelike infinity'--the endpoints of spacelike curves. We classify the distinct ways in which spacelike curves can approach infinity, finding a {\it two}-dimensional set of distinct limits. The dimensionality of the set of points at spacelike infinity is not, however, fixed from this argument. In an alternative topology, the causal completion is already compact, but the completion is non-Hausdorff.

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