Near-field expansion of the metric due to a cosmic string (Q4702012)

This paper shows that two types of gravitational waves are naturally supported by cosmic strings. As the author notes the first ``travelling waves'' were previously identified by \textit{T. Vachaspati} [Nucl. Phys. B 277, 593-604 (1986)] and \textit{D. Garfinkle} [Phys. Rev. D (3) 41, 1112-1115 (1990; Zbl 0983.83501)]. They naturally arise by superposing plane-fronted gravitational waves on the near-field metric of a cosmic string and are completely decoupled from the curvature of the world sheet. The second which the author terms ``curvature waves'' are directly coupled to the string's world sheet. The author illustrates the existence of ``curvature waves'' in this paper. To clearly differentiate the two types of waves the author constructs ``coordinates in a neighborhood of the world sheet that are tailored to the geometry of the world sheet in a natural way.'' He does a \(3 + 1\) split of the cosmic string metric and constructs what he terms a canonical form of ``the line element for a generic cosmic string in vacuum in some neighborhood of the world sheet.'' He then finds a series solution to the vacuum Einstein equations in terms of the geodesic distance \(r\). Using the canonical line element he can standardise and compare the near-field metrics of cosmic strings in vacuum and differentiate ``travelling waves'' from ``curvature waves''. He does this simply by noting whether the metric supports terms of \(r^{1/\alpha}\) (``travelling waves'') or terms of order \(r^{2}\) (``curvature waves''). The latter so named because they couple directly to the curvature.