Given a spacelike 2-surface $Σ$ in a spacetime $N$ and a constant future timelike unit vector $T_0 $ in $\R^{3,1}$, we derive upper and lower estimates of Wang-Yau quasilocal energy $E(Σ, X, T_0)$ for a given isometric embedding $X$ of $Σ$ into a flat 3-slice in $\R^{3,1}$. The quantity $ E(Σ, X, T_0) $ itself depends on the choice of $X$, however the infimum of $ E(Σ, X, T_0)$ over $ T_0 $ does not. In particular, when $Σ$ lies in a time symmetric 3-slice in $N$ and has nonnegative Brown-York quasilocal mass $\mby(Σ)$, our estimates show that $\inf\limits_{T_0}E(Σ, X, T_0)$ equals $ \mby (Σ)$. We also study the spatial limit of $ \inf\limits_{T_0}E(S_r,X_r,T_0)$, where $S_r$ is a large coordinate sphere in a fixed end of an asymptotically flat initial data set $(M, g, p)$ and $X_r$ is an isometric embeddings of $S_r$ into $\mathbb{R}^3 \subset \mathbb{R}^{3,1}$. We show that if $(M, g, p)$ has future timelike ADM energy-momentum, then $\lim\limits_{r\to\infty}\inf\limits_{T_0}E(S_r,X_r,T_0)$ equals the ADM mass of $(M, g, p)$.
We discuss some geometric problems related to the definitions of quasilocal mass proposed by Brown-York \cite{BYmass1} \cite{BYmass2} and Liu-Yau \cite{LY1} \cite{LY2}. Our discussion consists of three parts. In the first part, we propose a new variational problem on compact manifolds with boundary, which is motivated by the study of Brown-York mass. We prove that critical points of this variation problem are exactly static metrics. In the second part, we derive a derivative formula for the Brown-York mass of a smooth family of closed 2 dimensional surfaces evolving in an ambient three dimensi…
In this paper, we prove the following theorem regarding the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy of a spacelike two-surface in a spacetime: Let $Σ$ be a boundary component of some compact, time-symmetric, spacelike hypersurface $Ω$ in a time-oriented spacetime $N$ satisfying the dominant energy condition. Suppose the induced metric on $Σ$ has positive Gaussian curvature and all boundary components of $Ω$ have positive mean curvature. Suppose $H \le H_0$ where $H$ is the mean curvature of $Σ$ in $Ω$ and $H_0$ is the mean curvature of $Σ$ when isometrically embedded in $R^3$. If $Ω$ is not isometric to a…
In this article, we study the small sphere limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy defined in [18,19]. Given a point $p$ in a spacetime $N$, we consider a canonical family of surfaces approaching $p$ along its future null cone and evaluate the limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy. The evaluation relies on solving an "optimal embedding equation" whose solutions represent critical points of the quasi-local energy. For a spacetime with matter fields, the scenario is similar to that of the large sphere limit found in [7]. Namely, there is a natural solution which is a local minimum, and the l…
I shall discuss the Chen-Wang-Yau quasilocal angular momentum, which is defined based on the theory of optimal isometric embedding and quasilocal mass of Wang-Yau, and the limits of which at spatial and null infinity of an isolated gravitating system. This is based on joint work with Po-Ning Chen, Jordan Keller, Ye-Kai Wang, and Shing-Tung Yau.
We study a functional on the boundary of a compact Riemannian 3-manifold of nonnegative scalar curvature. The functional arises as the second variation of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy in general relativity. We prove that the functional is positive definite on large coordinate spheres, and more general on nearly round surfaces including large constant mean curvature spheres in asymptotically flat 3-manifolds with positive mass; it is also positive definite on small geodesics spheres, whose centers do not have vanishing curvature, in Riemannian 3-manifolds of nonnegative scalar curvature. We …
The problem of quasilocal energy has been extensively studied mainly in four dimensions. Here we report results regarding the quasilocal energy in spacetime dimension $n\geq 4$. After generalising three distinct quasilocal energy definitions to higher dimensions under appropriate assumptions, we evaluate their small sphere limits along lightcone cuts shrinking towards the lightcone vertex. The results in vacuum are conveniently represented in terms of the electromagnetic decompositions of the Weyl tensor. We find that the limits at presence of matter yield the stress tensor as expected, but th…
We discuss the concepts of energy and mass in relativity. On a finitely extended spatial region, they lead to the notion of quasilocal energy/mass for the boundary 2-surface in spacetime. A new definition was found in [27] that satisfies the positivity, rigidity, and asymptotics properties. The definition makes use of the surface Hamiltonian term which arises from Hamilton-Jacobi analysis of the gravitation action. The reference surface Hamiltonian is associated with an isometric embedding of the 2-surface into the Minkowski space. We discuss this new definition of mass as well as the referenc…
Inspired by the work of Chen-Zhang \cite{Chen-Zhang}, we derive an evolution formula for the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy in reference to a static space, introduced by Chen-Wang-Wang-Yau \cite{CWWY}. If the reference static space represents a mass minimizing, static extension of the initial surface $Σ$, we observe that the derivative of the Wang-Yau quasi-local energy is equal to the derivative of the Bartnik quasi-local mass at $Σ$. Combining the evolution formula for the quasi-local energy with a localized Penrose inequality proved in \cite{Lu-Miao}, we prove a rigidity theorem for compact $3…
In this paper lower bounds are obtained for quasi-local masses in terms of charge, angular momentum, and horizon area. In particular we treat three quasi-local masses based on a Hamiltonian approach, namely the Brown-York, Liu-Yau, and Wang-Yau masses. The geometric inequalities are motivated by analogous results for the ADM mass. They may be interpreted as localized versions of these inequalities, and are also closely tied to the conjectured Bekenstein bounds for entropy of macroscopic bodies. In addition, we give a new proof of the positivity property for the Wang-Yau mass which is used to r…
In this paper, we show that the Chen-Nester-Tung (CNT) quasi-local energy is closely related to the Wang-Yau (WY) quasi-local mass. As a particular example, we compute the second variation of the CNT quasi-local energy for axially symmetric Kerr-like spacetimes with axially symmetric embeddings at the obvious critical point (0,0) and find that it is a saddle critical point in most of the cases. Also, as a byproduct, we generalize a previous result about the coincidence of CNT quasi-local energy and Brown-York mass for Kerr-like spacetimes by Tam and the first author to general spacetimes.
We derive a parabolic version of Omori-Yau maximum principle for a proper mean curvature flow when the ambient space has lower bound on $\ell$-sectional curvature. We apply this to show that the image of Gauss map is preserved under a proper mean curvature flow in euclidean spaces with uniform bounded second fundamental forms. This generalizes the result of Wang \cite{Wang} for compact immersions. We also prove a Omori-Yau maximum principle for properly immersed self-shrinkers, which improves a result in \cite{CJQ}.
We give a brief review of the definition of the Wang-Yau quasilocal mass and discuss the evaluation of which on surfaces of unit size at null infinity of an axi-symmetric spacetime in Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner coordinates.
We study the quasi-local energy (QLE) and the surface geometry for Kerr spacetime in the Boyer-Lindquist coordinates without taking the slow rotation approximation. We also consider in the region $r\leq2m$, which is inside the ergosphere. For a certain region, $r>r_{k}(a)$, the Gaussian curvature of the surface with constant $t,r$ is positive, and for $r>\sqrt{3}a$ the critical value of the QLE is positive. We found that the three curves: the outer horizon $r=r_{+}(a)$, $r=r_{k}(a)$ and $r=\sqrt{3}a$ intersect at the point $a=\sqrt{3}m/2$, which is the limit for the horizon to be isometrically…
In this note, we compute the limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local mass on unit spheres at spatial infinity of an asymptotically flat initial data set. Similar to the small sphere limit of the Wang-Yau quasi-local mass, we prove that the leading order term of the quasi-local mass recovers the stress-energy tensor. For a vacuum spacetime, the quasi-local mass decays faster and the leading order term is related to the Bel-Robinson tensor. Several new techniques of evaluating quasilocal mass are developed in this note.
Wang and Yau [10] introduced a quasi-local mass, which is a hyperbolic background generalization of Liu-Yau's expression [7] [8], and proved its positivity. In this note, we prove that the positivity of this quasi-local mass is still valid under weaker assumptions on the boundary hypersurface in general dimensions. The method we used is similar to that used by Eichmair, Miao and Wang in [4].
In the previous work [35], the second and third authors established a Bochner type formula on Alexandrov spaces. The purpose of this paper is to give some applications of the Bochner type formula. Firstly, we extend the sharp lower bound estimates of spectral gap, due to Chen-Wang [9, 10] and Bakry-Qian [6], from smooth Riemannian manifolds to Alexandrov spaces. As an application, we get an Obata type theorem for Alexandrov spaces. Secondly, we obtain (sharp) Li-Yau's estimate for positve solutions of heat equations on Alexandrov spaces.
We consider graphs Sigma^n in R^m with prescribed mean curvature and flat normal bundle. Using techniques of Schoen, Simon and Yau, and Ecker-Huisken, we derive an interior curvature estimate of the form |A|^2<=C/R^2 up to dimension n<=5, where C is a constant depending on natural geometric data of Sigma^n only. This generalizes previous results of Smoczyk, Wang and Xin, and Wang for minimal graphs with flat normal bundle.
An idealized observer of an astronomical event is situated at future null infinity, where light rays emitted from the source approach. Mathematically, null infinity corresponds to the portion of the spacetime boundary defined by equivalence classes of null geodesics. But what can we observe at future null infinity? In the note, we start by reviewing the description of null infinity in terms of the Bondi-Sachs coordinate system. In particular, we reformulate and extend the invariance of Bondi mass and the mass loss formula in terms of a modified mass aspect 2-form. At the end, we discuss new re…
We present some results that complement our prequels [arXiv:1809.08425,arXiv:1907.05770] on holomorphic vector bundles. We apply the method of the Quot-scheme limit of Fubini-Study metrics developed therein to provide a generalisation to the singular case of the result originally obtained by X.W. Wang for the smooth case, which states that the existence of balanced metrics is equivalent to the Gieseker stability of the vector bundle. We also prove that the Bergman 1-parameter subgroups form subgeodesics in the space of hermitian metrics. This paper also contains a review of techniques develope…
