https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-022-03359-2
Letter to the Editor
Gravitational waves as waveguides
1
School of Physics and Astronomy, Monash University, Clayton, Australia
2
Alikhanian National Laboratory, Center for Cosmology and Astrophysics, Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia
3
SIA, Sapienza Universita di Roma, Rome, Italy
Received:
19
September
2022
Accepted:
30
September
2022
Published online:
14
October
2022
We show that gravitational waves can act as waveguides for electromagnetic radiation, that is, if the latter is initially aligned with the gravitational waves, then the alignment will survive during the propagation. The analysis is performed using the Hamiltonian formalism and the Jacobi equation for null geodesics, and conditions for certain cases of polarization of the waves are obtained. The effect of waveguiding by the gravitational waves can influence the interpretation of associated gravitational and electromagnetic wave events, since the latter cannot necessarily obey the inverse square decay law for intensity.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022
