Existence and stability of circular orbits in general static and spherically symmetric spacetimes

The existence and stability of circular orbits (CO) in static and spherically symmetric (SSS) spacetime are important because of their practical and potential usefulness. In this paper, using the fixed point method, we first prove a necessary and sufficient condition on the metric function for the existence of timelike COs in SSS spacetimes. After analyzing the asymptotic behavior of the metric, we then show that asymptotic flat SSS spacetime that corresponds to a negative Newtonian potential at large r will always allow the existence of CO. The stability of the CO in a general SSS spacetime is then studied using the Lyapunov exponent method. Two sufficient conditions on the (in)stability of the COs are obtained. For null geodesics, a sufficient condition on the metric function for the (in)stability of null CO is also obtained. We then illustrate one powerful application of these results by showing that three SSS spacetimes whose metric function is not completely known will allow the existence of timelike and/or null COs. We also used our results to assert the existence and (in)stabilities of a number of known SSS metrics.     

Positive mass from holographic causality

For (n+1)-dimensional asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetimes which have holographic duals on their n-dimensional conformal boundaries, we show that the imposition of causality on the boundary theory is sufficient to prove positivity of mass for the spacetime when n> or =3, without the assumption of any local energy condition. We make crucial use of a time-delay formula relating the Ashtekar-Magnon mass of the spacetime to the time delay of a bulk null curve relative to that of a boundary null geodesic. We also discuss holographic causality for the negative mass AdS soliton and its implications for the positive energy conjecture of Horowitz and Myers.     

Inflationary spacetimes are incomplete in past directions

Many inflating spacetimes are likely to violate the weak energy condition, a key assumption of singularity theorems. Here we offer a simple kinematical argument, requiring no energy condition, that a cosmological model which is inflating--or just expanding sufficiently fast--must be incomplete in null and timelike past directions. Specifically, we obtain a bound on the integral of the Hubble parameter over a past-directed timelike or null geodesic. Thus inflationary models require physics other than inflation to describe the past boundary of the inflating region of spacetime.     

Existence of maximal surfaces in asymptotically flat spacetimes

We prove the existence of maximal surfaces in asymptotically flat spacetime satisfying an interior condition. This uses a priori estimates which can also be applied to prescribed mean curvature surfaces in cosmological spacetimes and the Dirichlet problem.     

Concircular Curvature Tensor and Fluid Spacetimes

In the differential geometry of certain F-structures, the importance of concircular curvature tensor is very well known. The relativistic significance of this tensor has been explored here. The spacetimes satisfying Einstein field equations and with vanishing concircular curvature tensor are considered and the existence of Killing and conformal Killing vectors have been established for such spacetimes. Perfect fluid spacetimes with vanishing concircular curvature tensor have also been considered. The divergence of concircular curvature tensor is studied in detail and it is seen, among other results, that if the divergence of the concircular tensor is zero and the Ricci tensor is of Codazzi type then the resulting spacetime is of constant curvature. For a perfect fluid spacetime to possess divergence-free concircular curvature tensor, a necessary and sufficient condition has been obtained in terms of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model.     

Stability of generic thin shells in conformally flat spacetimes

Some important spacetimes are conformally flat; examples are the Robertson–Walker cosmological metric, the Einstein–de Sitter spacetime, and the Levi-Civita–Bertotti–Robinson and Mannheim metrics. In this paper we construct generic thin shells in conformally flat spacetime supported by a perfect fluid with a linear equation of state, i.e., \(p=\omega \sigma .\) It is shown that, for the physical domain of \(\omega \), i.e., \(0<\omega \le 1\), such thin shells are not dynamically stable. The stability of the timelike thin shells with the Mannheim spacetime as the outer region is also investigated.     

The generic condition is generic

We consider the generic condition for vectors—both null and non-null—at a fixed pointp of a spacetime, and ask just how generic this condition is. In a general spacetime, if the curvature is not zero at the pointp, then the generic condition is found to be generic in the mathematical sense that it holds on an open dense set of vectors atp; more specifically, if there are as many as five non-null vectors in general position atp which fail to satisfy the generic condition, then the curvature vanishes atp. If the Riemann tensor is restricted to special forms, then stronger statements hold: An Einstein spacetime with three linearly independent nongeneric timelike vectors atp is flat atp. A Petrov type D spacetime may not have any nongeneric timelike vectors except possibly those lying in the plane of the two principal null directions; if any of the non-null vectors in such a plane are nongeneric, then so are all the vectors of that plane, as well as the plane orthogonal to it.     

A strictly-positive mass theorem

We show that the ADM 4-momentum of an isolated gravitational system (spatially asymptotically flat spacetime) satisfying the dominant energy condition cannot be null-like unless it is flat. Together with the positive mass theorem, this implies that the ADM 4-momentum of an isolated gravitational system must be strictly time-like.Research supported in part by NSF grant DMS84-09447     

Homothetic and conformal symmetries of solutions to Einstein's equations

We present several results about the nonexistence of solutions of Einstein's equations with homothetic or conformal symmetry. We show that the only spatially compact, globally hyperbolic spacetimes admitting a hypersurface of constant mean extrinsic curvature, and also admitting an infinitesimal proper homothetic symmetry, are everywhere locally flat; this assumes that the matter fields either obey certain energy conditions, or are the Yang-Mills or massless Klein-Gordon fields. We find that the only vacuum solutions admitting an infinitesimal proper conformal symmetry are everywhere locally flat spacetimes and certain plane wave solutions. We show that if the dominant energy condition is assumed, then Minkowski spacetime is the only asymptotically flat solution which has an infinitesimal conformal symmetry that is asymptotic to a dilation. In other words, with the exceptions cited, homothetic or conformal Killing fields are in fact Killing in spatially compact or asymptotically flat spactimes. In the conformal procedure for solving the initial value problem, we show that data with infinitesimal conformal symmetry evolves to a spacetime with full isometry.     

Loop Quantum Gravity à la Aharonov–Bohm

In this paper we calculate the Bondi mass of asymptotically flat spacetimes with interacting electromagnetic and scalar fields. The system of coupled Einstein–Maxwell–Klein–Gordon equations is investigated and corresponding field equations are written in the spinor form and in the Newman–Penrose formalism. Asymptotically flat solution of the resulting system is found near null infinity. Finally we use the asymptotic twistor equation to find the Bondi mass of the spacetime and derive the Bondi mass-loss formula. We compare the results with our previous work (Bi?ák et al. in Class Quantum Gravity 27(17):175011, 2010) and show that, unlike the conformal scalar field, the (Maxwell–)Klein–Gordon field has negatively semi-definite mass-loss formula.     

On the Geometry and Mass of Static,Asymptotically AdS Spacetimes,and the Uniqueness of the AdS Soliton

We prove two theorems, announced in [6], for static spacetimes that solve Einstein's equation with negative cosmological constant. The first is a general structure theorem for spacetimes obeying a certain convexity condition near infinity, analogous to the structure theorems of Cheeger and Gromoll for manifolds of non-negative Ricci curvature. For spacetimes with Ricci-flat conformal boundary, the convexity condition is associated with negative mass. The second theorem is a uniqueness theorem for the negative mass AdS soliton spacetime. This result lends support to the new positive mass conjecture due to Horowitz and Myers which states that the unique lowest mass solution which asymptotes to the AdS soliton is the soliton itself. This conjecture was motivated by a nonsupersymmetric version of the AdS/CFT correspondence. Our results add to the growing body of rigorous mathematical results inspired by the AdS/CFT correspondence conjecture. Our techniques exploit a special geometric feature which the universal cover of the soliton spacetime shares with familiar ``ground state' spacetimes such as Minkowski spacetime, namely, the presence of a null line, or complete achronal null geodesic, and the totally geodesic null hypersurface that it determines. En route, we provide an analysis of the boundary data at conformal infinity for the Lorentzian signature static Einstein equations, in the spirit of the Fefferman-Graham analysis for the Riemannian signature case. This leads us to generalize to arbitrary dimension a mass definition for static asymptotically AdS spacetimes given by Chruciel and Simon. We prove equivalence of this mass definition with those of Ashtekar-Magnon and Hawking-Horowitz.     

Rigidity in vacuum under conformal symmetry

Motivated in part by Eardley et al. (Commun Math Phys 106(1):137–158, 1986), in this note we obtain a rigidity result for globally hyperbolic vacuum spacetimes in arbitrary dimension that admit a timelike conformal Killing vector field. Specifically, we show that if M is a Ricci flat, timelike geodesically complete spacetime with compact Cauchy surfaces that admits a timelike conformal Killing field X, then M must split as a metric product, and X must be Killing. This gives a partial proof of the Bartnik splitting conjecture in the vacuum setting.     

Global hyperbolicity and completeness

We prove global hyperbolicity of spacetimes under generic regularity conditions on the metric. We then show that these spacetimes are timelike and null geodesically complete if the gradient of the lapse and the extrinsic curvature K are integrable. This last condition is required only for the tracefree part of K if the universe is expanding.     

Spacelike metric foliations

In this paper, we investigate spacelike metric foliations in lightlike complete spacetimes. When such a foliation satisfies the strong energy condition Ric^V (e) ≥ 0 for timelike vectors e, it must be totally geodesic, and the metric is of higher rank, in the sense that each point of the spacetime is contained inside a flat, totally geodesic, timelike rectangle. If in addition Ric^V(e) = 0, then the metric is (at least locally) a product metric, with the leaves of the foliation tangent to one of the factors.     

Horizons and singularities in static,spherically symmetric spacetimes

We make a thorough study of the regions near finite-order metric-singularity boundaries of static, spherically symmetric spacetimes. After distinguishing curvature singularities from other types of metric breakdown, we examine the eigenvalues of the energy tensor near the singularities for positivity and energy dominance, find the causal class of the t-translation (static) Killing field, and ascertain the presence or absence of timelike, null, and spacelike geodesic incompleteness for each spacetime. For a certain subclass of spacetimes, we also show the completeness of all timelike and spacelike curves despite the superficial failure of the metric.     

On the Rigidity Theorem for Spacetimes with a Stationary Event Horizon or a Compact Cauchy Horizon

We consider smooth electrovac spacetimes which represent either (A) an asymptotically flat, stationary black hole or (B) a cosmological spacetime with a compact Cauchy horizon ruled by closed null geodesics. The black hole event horizon or, respectively, the compact Cauchy horizon of these spacetimes is assumed to be a smooth null hypersurface which is non-degenerate in the sense that its null geodesic generators are geodesically incomplete in one direction. In both cases, it is shown that there exists a Killing vector field in a one-sided neighborhood of the horizon which is normal to the horizon. We thereby generalize theorems of Hawking (for case (A)) and Isenberg and Moncrief (for case (B)) to the non-analytic case. Received: 4 November 1998 / Accepted: 13 February 1999     

Linear bosonic and fermionic quantum gauge theories on curved spacetimes

We develop a general setting for the quantization of linear bosonic and fermionic field theories subject to local gauge invariance and show how standard examples such as linearised Yang-Mills theory and linearised general relativity fit into this framework. Our construction always leads to a well-defined and gauge-invariant quantum field algebra, the centre and representations of this algebra, however, have to be analysed on a case-by-case basis. We discuss an example of a fermionic gauge field theory where the necessary conditions for the existence of Hilbert space representations are not met on any spacetime. On the other hand, we prove that these conditions are met for the Rarita-Schwinger gauge field in linearised pure $N=1$ supergravity on certain spacetimes, including asymptotically flat spacetimes and classes of spacetimes with compact Cauchy surfaces. We also present an explicit example of a supergravity background on which the Rarita-Schwinger gauge field can not be consistently quantized.     

Affine gravity,Palatini formalism and charges

Affine gravity and the Palatini formalism contribute both to produce a simple and unique formula for calculating charges at spatial and null infinity for Lovelock type Lagrangians whose variational derivatives do not depend on second-order derivatives of the field components. The method is based on the covariant generalization due to Julia and Silva of the Regge–Teitelboim procedure that was used to define properly the mass in the classical formulation of Einstein’s theory of gravity. Numerous applications reproduce standard results obtained by other secure but mostly specialized method like in ADM energy for asymptotically flat spacetimes and in Abbot and Deser for asymptotically de Sitter and anti-de Sitter spacetimes, both at spatial infinity. As a novel application we calculate the Bondi energy loss in five dimensional gravity, based on the asymptotic solution given by Tanabe et al. and obtain, as expected, the same result. We also give the for Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet gravity and find the superpotential for Lovelock theories of gravity when the number of dimensions tends to infinity with maximally symmetrical boundaries. The paper is written in standard component formalism.     

Scaling arguments and gravitating solitons

Scaling arguments are generalized to discuss the existence and the stability of static, spherically symmetric self-gravitating solitons in asymptotically flat and asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes in $D$ dimensions. The formulas obtained from the scaling arguments are applied to the Einstein–Yang–Mills solitons with higher order terms in $D=4$ and $D=5$ dimensions and the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Chern–Simons solitons in $D=5$ dimension. We have shown that the negative cosmological constant, in general, improves the stability of the solitons. In $D=4$ , in fact, the negative cosmological constant is essential for the stability of the solitons. In $D=5$ , however, the higher order terms or the Chern–Simons term play more crucial role in the stability of the solitons; the possibility of having stable solitons exists in an asymptotically flat spacetime.