Some solutions of the Lanczos vacuum wave equation

Abstract

In general relativity the non-local part of the gravitational field is described by the 10 degrees of freedom of the Weyl conformal curvature tensor C abcd . In every space-time the Weyl field C abcd is derivable from a potential L abc which has at most 16 algebraically independent components reducing to 10 degrees of freedom when the six gauge conditions L ab s ; s = 0 are imposed. The potential L abc discov­ered by Lanczos was shown by Illge to have an extremely simple vacuum wave equation, namely, □ L abc ≡ g sm L abc ; s ; m = 0. Using tensor, spinor and spin-coefficient methods we give some solutions of this new vacuum wave equation in some spacetimes containing one or more preferred vector fields.