Causal inheritence in plane wave quotients

Journal Article · Mon Nov 24 04:00:00 EST 2003

OSTI ID:842736

Hubeny, Veronika E ^[1]; Rangamani, Mukund; Ross, Simon F

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1. LBNL Library

We investigate the appearance of closed timelike curves in quotients of plane waves along spacelike isometries. First we formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for a quotient of a general spacetime to preserve stable causality. We explicitly show that the plane waves are stably causal; in passing, we observe that some pp-waves are not even distinguishing. We then consider the classification of all quotients of the maximally supersymmetric ten-dimensional plane wave under a spacelike isometry, and show that the quotient will lead to closed timelike curves iff the isometry involves a translation along the u direction. The appearance of these closed timelike curves is thus connected to the special properties of the light cones in plane wave spacetimes. We show that all other quotients preserve stable causality.

• Research Organization: Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Director. Office of Science. Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics. Division of High Energy Physics; National Science Foundation Grants PHY-9870115 and PHY-0098840; Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
• DOE Contract Number: AC03-76SF00098
• OSTI ID: 842736
• Report Number(s): LBNL--53482
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
CAUSALITY
CLASSIFICATION
LIGHT CONE
SPACE-TIME