Lightlike Contractions in Curved Spacetime

摘要

The technique of lightlike contractions in flat and curved space is described. The method consists in boosting a classical field configuration to the velocity of light by an appropriate generalized Lorentz transformation. Within this framework the gravitational field of a massless neutral particle is a meaningful concept. For electrically charged particles, however, the field equations seem to prevent an analogous procedure. We thus conjecture that general relativity forbids the existance of charged point particles moving with the velocity of light. Further examples for lightlike contractions of a self-dual electromagnetic field and of a linearized Rarita-Schwinger (spin-3/2) field are given. (Atomindex citation 15:054118)