Conformal geometry of gravitational plane waves (Q2387799)

The authors determine all Ricci flat four-dimensional space-times which admit a seven-dimen\-sional conformal group. These come in three families of plane gravitational waves. Each of them is explicitly given, together with the Lie algebra of conformal Killing vectors, in terms of elementary functions depending on finitely many parameters. The greater class with a six-dimensional conformal group does not admit a finite parametrization and contains space-times which are \(C^\infty\) but not real-analytic. This fact is in contrast to a result on Riemannian Einstein manifolds.