Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2017 / ii / Paper 4 / 36D / a

Use $G=c=1$ and the physical real part of the printed plane wave. Its null wavevector obeys $k^{\alpha }{k}_{\alpha }=0$, so each component satisfies $\square h_{\alpha \beta }=0$. Direct differentiation of the defined stress tensor givesThe trace is proportional to $k^{\nu }{k}_{\nu }$ for a single plane wave and hence vanishes. ThereforeThis is local conservation of energy and momentum conservation; spatial integration gives conserved total charges when the boundary flux vanishes. For a finite-amplitude complex phasor, one takes the real field before quadratic products and may time-average: $⟨{\tau }_{\mu \nu }⟩=k_{\mu }{k}_{\nu }{H}^{\alpha \beta }{\overline{H}}_{\alpha \beta }/(64\pi )$ in transverse-traceless gauge. Its energy density is nonnegative and its flux travels in the positive $z$ direction.