Effects of gravitational waves on electromagnetic fields

We focus on the interaction of a plane gravitational wave with electromagnetic fields and we describe this interaction in the proper detector frame where, thanks to the introduction of Fermi coordinates, it is possible to refer to directly measurable quantities. The presence of a gravitational field can be addressed in terms of an effective electromagnetic medium and, within this framework, we show that the coupling of pre-existing electromagnetic fields with the gravitational field of the wave gives rise to new effective currents. To assess the impact of these effects, we solve Maxwell’s equations for some standard configurations of the electric and magnetic fields.