The Geometry of Regular Shear-Free Null Geodesic Congruences, CR functions and their Application to the Flat-Space Maxwell Equations

Autor: Kozameh, Carlos, Newman, E. T., Silva-Ortigoza, Gilberto
Rok vydání: 2007
Předmět:
Zdroj: Class.Quant.Grav.24:5479-5494,2007
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
DOI: 10.1088/0264-9381/24/22/012
Popis: We describe here what appears to be a new structure that is hidden in all asymptotically vanishing Maxwell fields possessing a non-vanishing total charge. Though we are dealing with real Maxwell fields on real Minkowski space nevertheless, directly from the asymptotic field one can extract a complex analytic world-line defined in complex Minkowski space that gives a unified Lorentz invariant meaning to both the electric and magnetic dipole moments. In some sense the world-line defines a `complex center of charge' around which both electric and magnetic dipole moments vanish. The question of how and where does this complex world-line arise is one of the two main subjects of this work. The other subject concerns what is known in the mathematical literature as a CR structure. In GR, CR structures naturally appear in the physical context of shear-free (or asymptotically shear-free) null geodesic congruences in space-time. For us, the CR structure is associated with the embedding of Penrose's real three-dimensional null infinity, I^+, as a surface in a two complex dimensional space, C^2. It is this embedding, via a complex function, (a CR function), that is our other area of interest. Specifically we are interested in the `decomposition' of the CR function into its real and imaginary parts and the physical information contained in this decomposition.
Comment: 25 pages
Databáze: arXiv