Paper 4, Section II, E
A plane-wave spacetime has line element
where . Show that the line element is unchanged by the coordinate transformation
Show more generally that the line element is unchanged by coordinate transformations of the form
where and are functions of , which you should determine and which depend in total on four parameters (arbitrary constants of integration).
Deduce (without further calculation) that the line element is unchanged by a 6parameter family of coordinate transformations, of which a 5 -parameter family leave invariant the surfaces constant.
For a general coordinate transformation , give an expression for the transformed Ricci tensor in terms of the Ricci tensor and the transformation matrices . Calculate when the transformation is given by and deduce that