We study exact vacuum solutions to quadratic gravity (QG) of the Weyl types $N$ and III. We show that in an arbitrary dimension all Einstein spacetimes of the Weyl type $N$ with an appropriately chosen effective cosmological constant $\Lambda$ are exact solutions to QG and we refer to explicitly known metrics within this class. For type III Einstein spacetimes, an additional constraint follows from the field equations of QG and examples of spacetimes obeying such constraint are given. However, type III $pp$ waves do not satisfy this constraint and thus do not solve QG. For type $N$, we also study a wider class of spacetimes admitting a pure radiation term in the Ricci tensor. In contrast to the Einstein case, the field equations of generic QG determine optical properties of the geometry and restrict such exact solutions to the Kundt class. We provide examples of these metrics.

• Received 2 June 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.84.024047