Cartan's chains and Lorentz geometry (Q804971)

The paper deals with a 4-dimensional Lorentzian manifold M admitting a shearfree optical geometry. In other words, M is equipped with a Lorentz metric g and a null vector field k and it admits a real 1-form \(\lambda\) and a complex 1-form \(\mu\) such that \(\mu (k)=\lambda (k)=0;\) \(g=P^ 2(\mu {\bar \mu}-\lambda \nu);\) \(L_ k\lambda \wedge \lambda =0;\) \(L_ k\mu \wedge \lambda \wedge \mu =0,\) where P is a function and \(\nu\) a 1- form. Such a manifold M can be locally regarded as a product \(M={\mathbb{R}}\times N\), where the 3-dimensional manifold N turns out to be equipped with a non-degenerate Cauchy-Riemann structure (\(\lambda\),\(\mu\)). A null curve in M is said to be a null chain if it projects into a chain in N. The paper studies in detail the relations between chains and geodesics. This analysis is motivated by the study of null Yang-Mills fields.