Soliton solutions and cosmological gravitational waves

Abstract

We examine plane-symmetric cosmological solutions to Einstein's equations which can be generated by the "soliton" technique, using the homogeneous Bianchi solutions as seeds and arbitrary numbers of real or complex poles. In some circumstances, these solutions can be interpreted as "incipient" gravitational waves on the Bianchi background. At early times they look like nonlinear inhomogeneities propagating at nearly the speed of light ("gravisolitons"), while at late times they look like cosmological gravitational waves.