Boosted static multipole particles as sources of impulsive gravitational waves - art. no. 124024

It is shown that the known solutions for nonexpanding impulsive gravitation al waves generated by null particles of arbitrary multipole structure can b e obtained by boosting the Weyl solutions describing static sources with ar bitrary multipole moments, at least in a Minkowski background. We also disc uss the possibility of boosting static sources in (anti-)de Sitter backgrou nds, for which exact solutions are not known, to obtain the known solutions for null multipole particles in these backgrounds. [S0556-2821(98)02624-1] .