A class of elliptic-hyperbolic equations is placed in the context of a geometric variational theory, in which the change of type is viewed as a change in the character of an underlying metric. A fundamental example of a metric which changes in this way is the extended projective disc, which is Riemannian at ordinary points, Lorentzian at ideal points, and singular on the absolute. Harmonic fields on such a metric can be interpreted as the hodograph image of extremal surfaces in Minkowski 3-space. This suggests an approach to generalized Plateau problems in 3-dimensional space-time via Hodge theory on the extended projective disc. Analogous variational problems arise on Riemannian-Lorentzian flow metrics in fiber bundles (twisted nonlinear Hodge equations), and on certain singular Riemannian-Lorentzian manifolds which occur in relativity and quantum cosmology. The examples surveyed come with natural gauge theories and Hodge dualities. This paper is mainly a review, but some technical extensions are proven.
We compute the Green's function for the Hodge Laplacian on the symmetric spaces M\timesΣ, where M is a simply connected n-dimensional Riemannian or Lorentzian manifold of constant curvature and Σis a simply connected Riemannian surface of constant curvature. Our approach is based on a generalization to the case of differential forms of the method of spherical means and on the use of Riesz distributions on manifolds. The radial part of the Green's function is governed by a fourth order analogue of the Heun equation.
Sub-Riemannian Geometry is proved to play an important role in many applications, e.g., Mathematical Physics and Control Theory. The simplest example of sub-Riemannian structure is provided by the 3-D Heisenberg group. Sub-Riemannian Geometry enjoys major differences from the Riemannian being a generalisation of the latter at the same time, e.g., geodesics are not unique and may be singular, the Hausdorff dimension is larger than the manifold topological dimension. There exists a large amount of literature developing sub-Riemannian Geometry. However, very few is known about its natural extensi…
We call the Lie algebra of a Lie group with a left invariant pseudo-Riemannian flat metric pseudo-Riemannian flat Lie algebra. We give a new proof of a classical result of Milnor on Riemannian flat Lie algebras. We reduce the study of Lorentzian flat Lie algebras to those with trivial center or those with degenerate center. We show that the double extension process can be used to construct all Lorentzian flat Lie algebras with degenerate center generalizing a result of Aubert-Medina on Lorentzian flat nilpotent Lie algebras. Finally, we give the list of Lorentzian flat Lie algebras with degene…
In this paper after recalling some essential tools concerning the theory of differential forms in the Cartan, Hodge and Clifford bundles over a Riemannian or Riemann-Cartan space or a Lorentzian or Riemann-Cartan spacetime we solve with details several exercises involving different grades of difficult. One of the problems is to show that a recent formula appearing in the literature for the exterior covariant derivative of the Hodge dual of the torsion 2-forms is simply wrong. We believe that the paper will be useful for students (and eventually for some experts) on applications of differential…
Motivated by the application to spacetimes of general relativity we investigate the geometry and regularity of Lorentzian manifolds under certain curvature and volume bounds. We establish several injectivity radius estimates at a point or on the past null cone of a point. Our estimates are entirely local and geometric, and are formulated via a reference Riemannian metric that we canonically associate with a given observer $(p,T)$ --where $p$ is a point of the manifold and $T$ is a future-oriented time-like unit vector prescribed at $p$. The proofs are based on a generalization of arguments fro…
A quantum sl(2,R) coalgebra is shown to underly the construction of a large class of superintegrable potentials on 3D curved spaces, that include the non-constant curvature analogues of the spherical, hyperbolic and (anti-)de Sitter spaces. The connection and curvature tensors for these "deformed" spaces are fully studied by working on two different phase spaces. The former directly comes from a 3D symplectic realization of the deformed coalgebra, while the latter is obtained through a map leading to a spherical-type phase space. In this framework, the non-deformed limit is identified with the…
We consider an asymptotically flat Lorentzian manifold of dimension (1,3). An inequality is derived which bounds the Riemannian curvature tensor in terms of the ADM energy in the general case with second fundamental form. The inequality quantifies in which sense the Lorentzian manifold becomes flat in the limit when the ADM energy tends to zero.
The harmonic oscillator as a distinguished dynamical system can be defined not only on the Euclidean plane but also on the sphere and on the hyperbolic plane, and more generally on any configuration space with constant curvature and with a metric of any signature, either Riemannian (definite positive) or Lorentzian (indefinite). In this paper we study the main properties of these `curved' harmonic oscillators simultaneously on any such configuration space, using a Cayley-Klein (CK) type approach, with two free parameters $\ki, \kii$ which altogether correspond to the possible values for curvat…
In this paper we establish new Calabi-Bernstein results for maximal surfaces immersed into a Lorentzian product space of the form $M^2\times\mathbb{R}_1$, where $M^2$ is a connected Riemannian surface and $M^2\times\mathbb{R}_1$ is endowed with the Lorentzian metric $<,>=<,>_{M}-dt^2$. In particular, when $M$ is a Riemannian surface with non-negative Gaussian curvature $K_M$, we prove that any complete maximal surface in $M^2\times\mathbb{R}_1$ must be totally geodesic. Besides, if $M$ is non-flat we conclude that it must be a slice $M\times\{t_0\}$, $t_0\in\mathbb{R}$ (here by "complete" it i…
Some little considerations concerning the application of the Theory of Dirichlet Forms to stocastic variational principle on riemannian manifolds are performed
A Lorentzian manifold is defined here as a smooth pseudo-Riemannian manifold with a metric tensor of signature ((2n +1, 1)). A Robinson manifold is a Lorentzian manifold (M) of dimension (\geqslant 4) with a subbundle (N) of the complexification of (TM) such that the fibers of (N\to M) are maximal totally null (isotropic) and ([\Sec N, \Sec N]\subset \Sec N). Robinson manifolds are close analogs of the proper Riemannian, Hermite manifolds. In dimension 4, they correspond to space-times of general relativity, foliated by a family of null geodesics without shear. Such space-times, introduced in …
In the compact setting, Aazami and Ream \cite{Aazami:2022th} proved that Riemannian metrics dual to a class of Lorentzian metrics, called (compact) general plane-fronted waves, are almost-Kähler. In this note, we explain how to construct extremal and second-Chern-Einstein non-Kähler almost-Kähler metrics dual to those general plane-fronted waves.
We study the existence and cardinality of normal geodesics of different causal types on H(eisenberg)-type quaternion group equipped with the sub-Lorentzian metric. We present explicit formulas for geodesics and describe reachable sets by geodesics of different causal character. We compare results with the sub-Riemannian quaternion group and with the sub-Lorentzian Heisenberg group, showing that there are similarities and distinctions. We show that the geodesics on H-type quaternion groups with the sub-Lorentzian metric satisfy the equations describing the motion of a relativistic particle in a…
In this survey article we review several results on the curvature of semi-Riemannian metrics which are motivated by the positive mass theorem. The main themes are estimates of the Riemann tensor of an asymptotically flat manifold and the construction of Lorentzian metrics which satisfy the dominant energy condition.
Recently, the old notion of causal boundary for a spacetime V has been redefined in a consistent way. The computation of this boundary $\partial V$ for a standard conformally stationary spacetime V = R x M, suggests a natural compactification $M_B$ associated to any Riemannian metric on M or, more generally, to any Finslerian one. The corresponding boundary $\partial_B M$ is constructed in terms of Busemann-type functions. Roughly, $\partial_B M$ represents the set of all the directions in M including both, asymptotic and "finite" (or "incomplete") directions. This Busemann boundary $\partial_…
Completing the results obtained in a previous paper, we prove the symmetry of Hadamard/Seeley-deWitt off-diagonal coefficients in smooth $D$-dimensional Lorentzian manifolds. To this end, it is shown that, in any Lorentzian manifold, a sort of ``local Wick rotation'' of the metric can be performed provided the metric is a locally analytic function of the coordinates and the coordinates are ``physical''. No time-like Killing field is necessary. Such a local Wick rotation analytically continues the Lorentzian metric in a neighborhood of any point, or, more generally, in a neighborhood of a space…
The notion of relativistic observer is confronted with Naveira's classification of (pseudo-)Riemannian almost-product structures on space-time manifolds. Some physical properties and their geometrical counterparts are shortly discussed.
We use a construction which we call generalized cylinders to give a new proof of the fundamental theorem of hypersurface theory. It has the advantage of being very simple and the result directly extends to semi-Riemannian manifolds and to embeddings into spaces of constant curvature. We also give a new way to identify spinors for different metrics and to derive the variation formula for the Dirac operator. Moreover, we show that generalized Killing spinors for Codazzi tensors are restrictions of parallel spinors. Finally, we study the space of Lorentzian metrics and give a criterion when two L…
We determine all Ricci flat left invariant Lorentzian metrics on simply connected 2-step nilpotent Lie groups. We show that the $2k+1$-dimensional Heisenberg Lie group $H_{2k+1}$ carries a Ricci flat left invariant Lorentzian metric if and only if $k=1$. We show also that for any $2\leq q\leq k$, $H_{2k+1}$ carries a Ricci flat left invariant pseudo-Riemannian metric of signature $(q,2k+1-q)$ and we give explicite examples of such metrics.
We introduce variational problems on Riemannian manifolds with constrained acceleration and derive necessary conditions for normal extremals in the constrained variational problem. The problem consists on minimizing a higher-order energy functional, among a set of admissible curves defined by a constraint on the covariant acceleration. In addition, we use this framework to address the elastic splines problem with obstacle avoidance in the presence of this type of contraints.
We obtain all the three-dimensional Lorentzian metrics which admit three Killing vectors. The classification has been done with the aid of the formalism which exploits the obstruction criteria for the Killing equations recently developed by present authors. The current classification method does not rely on the transitivity property of the isometry group. It turns out that the Lorentzian manifold harbors a much richer spectrum of metrics with various Segre types, compared to the Riemannian case.
Recently, a link between Lorentzian and Finslerian Geometries has been carried out, leading to the notion of wind Riemannian structure (WRS), a generalization of Finslerian Randers metrics. Here, we further develop this notion and its applications to spacetimes, by introducing some characterizations and criteria for the completeness of WRS's. As an application, we consider a general class of spacetimes admitting a time function $t$ generated by the flow of a complete Killing vector field (generalized standard stationary spacetimes or, more precisely, SSTK ones) and derive simple criteria ensur…
We investigate connections between pairs of (pseudo-)Riemannian metrics whose sum is a (tensor) product of a covector field with itself. A bijective mapping between the classes of Euclidean and Lorentzian metrics is constructed as a special result. The existence of such maps on a differentiable manifold is discussed. Similar relations for metrics of arbitrary signature on a manifold are considered. We point the possibility that any physical theory based on real Lorentzian metric(s) can be (re)formulated equivalently in terms of real Euclidean metric(s).
We embed Nelson's stochastic quantization in the Schwartz-Meyer second order geometry framework. The result is a non-perturbative theory of quantum mechanics on (pseudo)-Riemannian manifolds. Within this approach, we derive stochastic differential equations for massive spin-0 test particles charged under scalar potentials, vector potentials and gravity. Furthermore, we derive the associated Schrödinger equation. The resulting equations show that massive scalar particles must be conformally coupled to gravity in a theory of quantum gravity. We conclude with a discussion of some prospects of the…
We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a semi-Riemannian manifold of arbitrary signature to be locally isometrically immersed into certain warped products. Then, we describe a way to use the structure equations of such immersions to construct foliations of marginally trapped surfaces in a four-dimensional Lorentzian spacetimes. We point out that, sometimes, Gauss and Codazzi equations are not sufficient to ensure the existence of a local isometric immersion of a semi-Riemannian manifold as a hypersurface of another manifold. We finally give two low-dimensional examples to illustrate o…
