Impulsive spherical gravitational waves

Penrose’s identification with warp provides the general framework for constructing the continuous form of impulsive gravitational wave metrics. We present the 2-component spinor formalism for the derivation of the full family of impulsive spherical gravitational wave metrics which brings out the power in identification with warp and leads to the simplest derivation of exact solutions. These solutions of the Einstein vacuum field equations are obtained by cutting Minkowski space into two pieces along a null cone and re-identifying them with warp which is given by an arbitrary non-linear holomorphic transformation. Using 2-component spinor techniques we construct a new metric describing an impulsive spherical gravitational wave where the vertex of the null cone lies on a world-line with constant acceleration.