AdS-plane wave and pp-wave solutions of generic gravity theories

We construct the AdS-plane wave solutions of generic gravity theory built on the arbitrary powers of the Riemann tensor and its derivatives in analogy with the pp-wave solutions. In constructing the wave solutions of the generic theory, we show that the most general two tensor built from the Riemann tensor and its derivatives can be written in terms of the traceless-Ricci tensor. Quadratic gravity theory plays a major role; therefore, we revisit the wave solutions in this theory. As examples to our general formalism, we work out the six-dimensional conformal gravity and its nonconformal deformation as well as the tricritical gravity, the Lanczos-Lovelock theory, and string-generated cubic curvature theory.