Near-field expansion of the metric due to a cosmic string
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.
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