The gravitational field of a light wave

Understand

According to the classical Einstein-Maxwell theory of gravity and electromagnetism, a light-wave traveling in empty space-time is accompanied by a gravitational field of the pp-type.

• Therefore point masses are scattered by a light wave, even if they carry no electric or magnetic charge, or dipole moment.
• In this paper I present the explicit form of the metric and curvature for both circularly and linearly polarized light, and discuss the geodesic motion of test masses.
• This is followed by a discussion of classical scattering of point particles by the gravitational field associated with a circularly polarized electromagnetic block wave.