Talk detail

Participant	Harriott, Tina
Institution	Mount Saint Vincent University - 166 Bedford Highway - Halifax - Nova Scotia - Canada

Session	ES1	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	Solutions for the null-surface formulation of general relativity
Coauthors
Abstract	The null-surface formulation of general relativity (NSF) provides an alternative way of representing the gravitational field and focuses on families of null surfaces rather than on the metric. The NSF utilizes special spacetime coordinates, called intrinsic coordinates, which are naturally adapted to the surfaces. The NSF field equations can be expressed in terms of derivatives of functions which specify the null surfaces but these field equations have proved difficult to solve. Since the NSF has been developed in both 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions, the present paper begins with a simple but nontrivial (2+1)-dimensional solution which is found by assuming dependence on only a single intrinsic coordinate. The idea is extended to 3+1 dimensions, where the possibility and nature of such single-coordinate solutions are explored.
Pdf file