Vertex operator solutions of 2d dimensionally reduced gravity (Q1976643)

This article discusses the integrable case of the vacuum Einstein equations in spacetimes with two surface orthogonal Killing vectors. The field equations reduce to the Ernst equations which are studied in the hyperbolic case which describes e.g.\ colliding gravitational waves. Vertex operator methods are used to construct a class of solutions given in terms of ratios of determinants of \(n\times n\) matrices with a finite number of free parameters. An extension to infinite \(n\) is possible with the use of Fredholm determinants. The explicit form of the solution is obtained by solving a factorization problem which was left open in a previous work with the help of the duality properties of the Ernst equations. This makes it possible to apply vertex operator methods to the Ernst equations though the associated linear system in the Belinskii-Zakharov approach has so-called moving poles.