Abstract

Gravitational waves with parallel rays are known to have remarkable properties: Their orbit space of null rays possesses the structure of a non-relativistic spacetime of codimension-one. Their geodesics are in one-to-one correspondence with dynamical trajectories of a non-relativistic system. Similarly, the null dimensional reduction of Klein-Gordon's equation on this class of gravitational waves leads to a Schroedinger equation on curved space. These properties are generalized to the class of gravitational waves with a null Killing vector field, of which we propose a new geometric definition, as conformally equivalent to the previous class and such that the Killing vector field is preserved. This definition is instrumental for performing this generalization, as well as various applications. In particular, results on geodesic completeness are extended in a similar way. Moreover, the classification of the subclass with constant scalar invariants is investigated.