Generating spacetimes from colliding sources

Abstract

Certain well-known spacetimes of general relativity (GR) are generated from the collision of suitable null-sources coupled with gravitational waves. This is a classical process underlying the full nonlinearity of GR that may be considered as a method to derive many familiar spacetimes at a large scale. Schwarzschild, de Sitter, anti-de Sitter, and the gamma-metrics are given as examples.