Sachs equations and plane waves IV: projective differential geometry

Abstract: This article gives an invariant representation of the curvature of a plane wave spacetime in terms of the Schwarzian of a curve in the Lagrangian Grassmannian. It develops a general theory of cross ratios and Schwarzians of curves in what it terms the middle Grassmannian. Most of the theory is developed in infinite dimensions, where the middle Grassmannian is defined via cocycles on the space of complemented subspaces of a topological vector space. In the case of Hilbert spaces, the middle Grassmannian coincides with the set of closed subspaces whose Hilbert dimension and codimension are the same cardinal. We show how to define the cross ratio of four mutually complementary subspaces, and give some applications to algebraic geometry. We then study differential calculus in the middle Grassmannian of a Banach space over a complete normed field, defining the tangent vector and covector to a curve, followed by the Schwarz invariant. We give a characterization of the vanishing of the Schwarz invariant in terms of hyperbolic structures. Then, we specialize to the case of (real) Hilbert spaces, and define a symplectic structure, which allows us to consider the Grassmannian of Lagrangian subspaces and the Lagrange--Schwarzian of positive curves in the Lagrangian Grassmannian, which we show represents the curvature of a plane wave.