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The Spacetime Geometry Of A Null Electromagnetic Field, Charles G. Torre Feb 2014

The Spacetime Geometry Of A Null Electromagnetic Field, Charles G. Torre

Presentations and Publications

We give a set of local geometric conditions on a spacetime metric which are necessary and sufficient for it to be a null electrovacuum, that is, the metric is part of a solution to the Einstein–Maxwell equations with a null electromagnetic field. These conditions are restrictions on a null congruence canonically constructed from the spacetime metric, and can involve up to five derivatives of the metric. The null electrovacuum conditions are counterparts of the Rainich conditions, which geometrically characterize non-null electrovacua. Given a spacetime satisfying the conditions for a null electrovacuum, a straightforward procedure builds the null electromagnetic field from …


Annual Solar Motion And Spy Satellites, Margaret Jensen, Shane L. Larson Jan 2014

Annual Solar Motion And Spy Satellites, Margaret Jensen, Shane L. Larson

Browse All Undergraduate research

A topic often taught in introductory astronomy courses is the changing position of the Sun in the sky as a function of time of day, and season. The relevance and importance of this motion is explained in the context of seasons and the impact it has on human activities such as agriculture. The geometry of the ob- served motion in the sky is usually reduced to graphical representations and visualizations that can be difficult to render and grasp. Sometimes students are asked to observe the Suns changing motion and record their data, but this is a long-term project requiring several …