There are three types of hypersurfaces in a pseudoconformal space C^n_1 of Lorentzian signature: spacelike, timelike, and lightlike. These three types of hypersurfaces are considered in parallel. Spacelike hypersurfaces are endowed with a proper conformal structure, and timelike hypersurfaces are endowed with a conformal structure of Lorentzian type. Geometry of these two types of hypersurfaces can be studied in a manner that is similar to that for hypersurfaces of a proper conformal space. Lightlike hypersurfaces are endowed with a degenerate conformal structure. This is the reason that their investigation has special features. It is proved that under the Darboux mapping such hypersurfaces are transferred into tangentially degenerate (n-1)-dimensional submanifolds of rank n-2 located on the Darboux hyperquadric. The isotropic congruences of the space C^n_1 that are closely connected with lightlike hypersurfaces and their Darboux mapping are also considered.
The authors study the geometry of lightlike hypersurfaces on a four-dimensional manifold $(M, c)$ endowed with a pseudoconformal structure $c = CO (2, 2)$. They prove that a lightlike hypersurface $V \subset (M, c)$ bears a foliation formed by conformally invariant isotropic geodesics and two isotropic distributions tangent to these geodesics, and that these two distributions are integrable if and only if $V$ is totally umbilical. The authors also indicate how, using singular points and singular submanifolds of a lightlike hypersurface $V \subset (M, c)$, to construct an invariant normalizatio…
The authors study the geometry of lightlike hypersurfaces on manifolds $(M, c)$ endowed with a pseudoconformal structure $c = CO (n - 1, 1)$ of Lorentzian signature. Such hypersurfaces are of interest in general relativity since they can be models of different types of physical horizons. On a lightlike hypersurface, the authors consider the fibration of isotropic geodesics and investigate their singular points and singular submanifolds. They construct a conformally invariant normalization of a lightlike hypersurface intrinsically connected with its geometry and investigate affine connections i…
We consider real isotropic geodesics on manifolds endowed with a pseudoconformal structure and their applications to the theory of lightlike hypersurfaces on such manifolds, the geometry of four-dimensional conformal structures of Lorentzian type, and a classification of the Einstein spaces.
In this paper, we study the invariant and noninvariant hypersurfaces of (1,1,1) almost contact manifolds, Lorentzian almost paracontact manifolds and Lorentzian para-Sasakian manifolds, respectively. We show that a noninvariant hypersurface of an (1,1,1) almost contact manifold admits an almost product structure. We investigate hypersurfaces of affinely cosymplectic and normal (1,1,1) almost contact manifolds. It is proved that a noninvariant hypersurface of a Lorentzian almost paracontact manifold is an almost product metric manifold. Some necessary and sufficient conditions have been given f…
In this paper we develop the notion of screen isoparametric hypersurface for null hypersurfaces of Robertson-Walker spacetimes. Using this formalism we derive Cartan identities for the screen principal curvatures of null screen hypersurfaces in Lorentzian space forms and provide a local characterization of such hypersurfaces.
Similar to the definition of Dupin hypersurface in Riemannian space forms, we define the spacelike Dupin hypersurface in Lorentzian space forms. As conformal invariant objects, spacelike Dupin hypersurfaces are studied in this paper using the framework of conformal geometry. Further we classify the spacelike Dupin hypersurfaces with constant Möbius curvatures, which are the partition ratio of the principal curvatures of the spacelike Dupin hypersurface.
In this paper, we study complete space-like $λ$-hypersurfaces in the Lorentzian space $\mathbb R^{n+1}_1$. As the result, we prove some rigidity theorems for these hypersurfaces including the complete space-like self-shrinkers in $\bbr^{n+1}_1$.
Let $M^{n+1}_1$ be a light-like geodesically complete Lorentzian $(n+1)$-manifold satisfying the null energy condition. We show that null hypersurfaces properly immersed in $M^{n+1}_1$ are totally geodesic.
In this paper we study $4$-dimensional affine hypersurfaces with a Lorentzian second fundamental form additionally equipped with an almost symplectic structure $ω$. We prove that the rank of the shape operator is at most one if $R^k\cdot ω=0$ or $\nabla^kω=0$ for some positive integer $k$. This result is the final step in a classification of Lorentzian affine hypersurfaces with higher order parallel almost symplectic forms.
In the authors' previous work, it was shown that if a zero mean curvature $C^4$-differentiable hypersurface in an arbitrarily given Lorentzian manifold admits a degenerate light-like point, then the hypersurface contains a light-like geodesic segment passing through the point. The purpose of this paper is to point out that the same conclusion holds with just $C^3$-differentiability of the hypersurfaces.
In this paper, we study Lorentzian hypersurfaces in Minkowski 5-space with non-diagonalizable shape operator whose characteristic polinomial is $(t-k_1)^2(t-k_3)(t-k_4)$ or $(t-k_1)^3(t-k_4)$. We proved that in these cases, a hypersurface is biharmonic if and only if it is minimal.
The existence of closed hypersurfaces of prescribed scalar curvature in globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifolds is proved provided there are barriers.
This paper looks at the splitting problem for globally hyperbolic spacetimes with timelike Ricci curvature bounded below containing a (spacelike, acausal, future causally complete) hypersurface with mean curvature bounded from above. For such spacetimes we show a splitting theorem under the assumption of either the existence of a ray of maximal length or a maximality condition on the volume of Lorentzian distance balls over the hypersurface. The proof of the first case follows work by Andersson, Galloway and Howard and uses their geometric maximum principle for level sets of the (Lorentzian) B…
In this paper we prove Hessian and Laplacian comparison theorems for the Lorentzian distance function in a spacetime with sectional (or Ricci) curvature bounded by a certain function by means of a comparison criterion for Riccati equations. Using these results, under suitable conditions, we are able to obtain some estimates on the higher order mean curvatures of spacelike hypersurfaces satisfying a Omori-Yau maximum principle for certain elliptic operators.
In the present paper, we show that the geometry of a screen integrable null hypersurface can be generated from an isometric immersion of a leaf of its screen distribution into the ambient space. We prove, under certain geometric conditions, that such immersions are contained in semi-Euclidean spheres or hyperbolic spaces, and the underlying null hypersurfaces are necessarily umbilic and screen totally umbilic. Where necessary, examples have been given to illustrate the main ideas.
Let $M^n$ be an $n$-dimensional umbilic-free hypersurface in the $(n+1)$-dimensional Lorentzian space form $M^{n+1}_1(c)$. Three basic invariants of $M^n$ under the conformal transformation group of $M^{n+1}_1(c)$ are a $1$-form $C$, called conformal $1$-form, a symmetric $(0,2)$ tensor $B$, called conformal second fundamental form, and a symmetric $(0,2)$ tensor $A$, called Blaschke tensor. The so-called para-Blaschke tensor $D^λ=A+λB$, the linear combination of $A$ and $B$, is still a symmetric $(0,2)$ tensor. A spacelike hypersurface is called a para-Blaschke isoparametric spacelike hypersu…
We consider geodesic flows between hypersurfaces in $\R^n$. However, rather than consider using geodesics in $\R^n$, which are straight lines, we consider an induced flow using geodesics between the tangent spaces of the hypersurfaces viewed as affine hyperplanes. For naturality, we want the geodesic flow to be invariant under rigid transformations and homotheties. Consequently, we do not use the dual projective space, as the geodesic flow in this space is not preserved under translations. Instead we give an alternate approach using a Lorentzian space, which is semi-Riemannian with a metric of…
For a hypersurface V of a conformal space, we introduce a conformal differential invariant I = h^2/g, where g and h are the first and the second fundamental forms of V connected by the apolarity condition. This invariant is called the conformal quadratic element of V. The solution of the problem of conformal rigidity is presented in the framework of conformal differential geometry and connected with the conformal quadratic element of V. The main theorem states: Let n \geq 4 and V and V' be two nonisotropic hypersurfaces without umbilical points in a conformal space C^n or a pseudoconformal spa…
Let N be a (n+1)-dimensional globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold with a compact Cauchy hypersurface. We consider curvature flows in N with different curvature functions F (including the mean curvature, the gauss curvature and the second elementary symmetric polynomial) and a volume preserving term. Under suitable assumptions we prove the long time existence of the flow and the exponential convergence of the corresponding graphs in the $C^\infty$-topology to a hypersurface of constant F-curvature. Furthermore we examine stability properties and foliations of constant F-curvature hypersurfac…
We study the geometry of stable maximal hypersurfaces in a variety of spacetimes satisfying various physically relevant curvature assumptions, for instance the Timelike Convergence Condition (TCC). We characterize stability when the target space has constant sectional curvature as well as give sufficient conditions on the geometry of the ambient spacetime (e.g., the validity of TCC) to ensure stability. Some rigidity results and height estimates are also proven in GRW spacetimes. In the last part of the paper we consider $k$-stability of spacelike hypersurfaces, a concept related to mean curva…
Given a null hypersurface $L$ of a Lorentzian manifold, we construct a Riemannian metric $\widetilde{g}$ on it from a fixed transverse vector field $ζ$. We study the relationship between the ambient Lorentzian manifold, the Riemannian manifold $(L,\widetilde{g})$ and the vector field $ζ$. As an application, we prove some new results on null hypersurfaces, as well as known ones, using Riemannian techniques.
In this paper we provide several uniqueness and non-existence results for complete parabolic constant mean curvature spacelike hypersurfaces in Lorentzian warped products under appropriate geometric assumptions. As a consequence of this parametric study, we obtain very general uniqueness and non-existence results for a large family of uniformly elliptic EDP's, so solving the Calabi-Bernstein problem in a wide family of spacetimes.
In this study, we obtain a spinorial Gauss formula for a lightlike hypersurface in Lorentzian manifold with 4-dimension. Then, we take into account the changes caused by degenerate metric on hypersurface and investigate Dirac operator for lightlike hypersurface. Later, we establish the relation between Dirac operators and Riemannian curvatures of manifold and hypersurface.
Anti-de Sitter space is the Lorentzian space form with negative curvature. In this paper we consider lightlike hypersurfaces along spacelike submanifolds in anti-de Sitter space with general codimension. In particular, we investigate the singularities of lightlike hypersurfaces as an application of the theory of Legendrian singularities.
In this article, we get classification theorems for a Ricci soliton on the pseudo-Riemannian hypersurface of the Minkowski space $\mathbb{E}^4_1$ taking the potential vector field as the tangent component of the position vector of the pseudo-Riemannian hypersurface, denoted by $(M,g,{\bf x}^T,λ)$ in both Riemannian and Lorentzian settings. First, we obtain the necessary and sufficient condition that a pseudo-Riemannian hypersurface $(M,g)$ in $\mathbb{E}^4_1$ admits a Ricci soliton $(M,g,{\bf x}^T,λ)$. In each of the form of the shape operator of a pseudo-Riemannian hypersurface, we obtain cha…
Some analysis on the Lorentzian distance in a spacetime with controlled sectional (or Ricci) curvatures is done. In particular, we focus on the study of the restriction of such distance to a spacelike hypersurface satisfying the Omori-Yau maximum principle. As a consequence, and under appropriate hypotheses on the (sectional or Ricci) curvatures of the ambient spacetime, we obtain sharp estimates for the mean curvature of those hypersurfaces. Moreover, we also give a suficient condition for its hyperbolicity.
We study hypersurfaces either in the De Sitter space $§_1^{n+1}\subset\R_1^{n+2}$ or in the anti De Sitter space $\H_1^{n+1}\subset\R_2^{n+2}$ whose position vector $ψ$ satisfies the condition $L_kψ=Aψ+b$, where $L_k$ is the linearized operator of the $(k+1)$-th mean curvature of the hypersurface, for a fixed $k=0,...,n-1$, $A$ is an $(n+2)\times(n+2)$ constant matrix and $b$ is a constant vector in the corresponding pseudo-Euclidean space. For every $k$, we prove that when $A$ is self-adjoint and $b=0$, the only hypersurfaces satisfying that condition are hypersurfaces with zero $(k+1)$-th me…
We develop area and volume comparison theorems for the evolution of spacelike, acausal, causally complete hypersurfaces in Lorentzian manifolds, where one has a lower bound on the Ricci tensor along timelike curves, and an upper bound on the mean curvature of the hypersurface. Using these results, we give a new proof of Hawking's singularity theorem.
In this paper, we give the Cartan's formula for half-lightlike submanifolds of Lorentzian manifolds and use it to show that a screen homothetic half-lightlike submanifolds of a Lorentzian space form, with a conformal co-screen distribution are locally a lightlike triple product manifolds. Then we give a classification theorem for half-lightlike submanifolds of Lorentzian space form with constant screen principal curvatures. These results extend some results obtained in the case of lightlike hypersurfaces of Lorentzian manifolds ([1]).
In this paper we study affine hypersurfaces with non-degenerate second fundamental form of arbitrary signature additionally equipped with an almost symplectic structure $ω$. We prove that if $R^pω=0$ or $\nabla^pω=0$ for some positive integer $p$ then the rank of the shape operator is at most one. The results provide complete classification of affine hypersurfaces with higher order parallel almost symplectic forms and are generalization of recently obtained results for Lorentzian affine hypersurfaces.
We introduce a class of null hypersurfaces of a semi-Riemannian manifold, namely, screen quasi-conformal hypersurfaces, whose geometry may be studied through the geometry of its screen distribution. In particular, this notion allows us to extend some results of previous works to the case in which the sectional curvature of the ambient space is different from zero. As applications, we study umbilical, isoparametric and Einstein null hypersurfaces in Lorentzian space forms and provide several classification results.
In this paper, we determine the type numbers of the pseudo-hyperbolic Gauss maps of all oriented Lorentzian surfaces of constant mean and Gaussian curvatures and non-diagonalizable shape operator in the $3$-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. Also, we investigate the behavior of type numbers of the pseudo-hyperbolic Gauss map along the parallel family of such oriented Lorentzian surfaces in the $3$-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. Furthermore, we investigate the type number of the pseudo-hyperbolic Gauss map of one of Lorentzian hypersurfaces of B-scroll type in a general dimensional anti-de Si…
We study the lightlike foliations that appear on Lorentzian manifolds with weakly irreducible not irreducible holonomy algebra. We give global structure equations for the foliation that generalize the Gauss and Weingarten equations for one lightlike hypersurface. This gives us some global operators on the manifold. Using these operators, we decompose the curvature tensor of the manifold into several components. We give a criteria how to find the type of the holonomy algebras (there are 4 possible types) in terms of the global operators.
We consider compact hypersurfaces in an $(n+1)$-dimensional either Riemannian or Lorentzian space $N^{n+1}$ endowed with a conformal Killing vector field. For such hypersurfaces, we establish an integral formula which, especially in the simpler case when $N=M^n\times R$ is a product space, allows us to derive some interesting consequences in terms of the scalar curvature of the hypersurface. For instance, when $n=2$ and $M^2$ is either the sphere $\mathbb{S}^2$ or the real projective plane $\mathbb{RP}^2$, we characterize the slices of the trivial totally geodesic foliation $M^2\times\{t\}$ as…
Hypersurfaces embedded in conformal manifolds appear frequently as boundary data in boundary-value problems in cosmology and string theory. Viewed as the non-null conformal infinity of a spacetime, we consider hypersurfaces embedded in a Riemannian (or Lorentzian) conformal manifold. We construct a finite and minimal family of hypersurface tensors -- the curvatures intrinsic to the hypersurface and the so-called ``conformal fundamental forms'' -- that can be used to construct natural conformal invariants of the hypersurface embedding up to a fixed order in hypersurface-orthogonal derivatives o…
We study the motion of an $n$-dimensional closed spacelike hypersurface in a Lorentzian manifold in the direction of its past directed normal vector, where the speed equals a positive power $p$ of the mean curvature. We prove that for any $p\in (0,1]$, the flow exists for all time when the Ricci tensor of the ambient space is bounded from below on the set of timelike unit vectors. Moreover, if we assume that all envolving hypersurfaces stay in a precompact region, then the flow converges to a stationary maximum spacelike hypersurface.
Assuming minimal regularity assumptions on the data, we revisit the classical problem of finding isometric immersions into the Minkowski spacetime for hypersurfaces of a Lorentzian manifold. Our approach encompasses metrics having Sobolev regularity and Riemann curvature defined in the distributional sense, only. It applies to timelike, spacelike, or null hypersurfaces with arbitrary signature that possibly changes from point to point.
We study Weyl structures on lightlikes hypersurfaces endowed with a conformal structure of certain type and specific screen distribution: the Weyl screen structures. We investigate various differential geometric properties of Einstein-Weyl screen structures on lightlike hypersurfaces and show that, for ambiant Lorentzian space $\mathbb{R}^{n+2}_{1}$ and a totally umbilical screen foliation, there is a strong interplay with the induced (Riemannian) Weyl-structure on the leaves. Finally, we establish necessary and sufficient conditions for a Weyl structure defined by the $1-$form of an almost co…
In this paper we construct examples of $CR$ deformations of Lorentzian hypersurfaces which are $CR$ embeddable at all points outside an arbitrarily small compact set whose interior contains a point where $CR$ embeddablity is not possible.
Let $(\overline M,\overline g)$ be a time- and space-oriented Lorentzian spin manifold, and let $M$ be a compact spacelike hypersurface of $\overline M$ with induced Riemannian metric $g$ and second fundamental form $K$. If $(\overline M,\overline g)$ satisfies the dominant energy condition in a strict sense, then the Dirac--Witten operator of $M\subseteq \overline M$ is an invertible, self-adjoint Fredholm operator. This allows us to use index theoretical methods in order to detect non-trivial homotopy groups in the space of initial on $M$ satisfying the dominant energy condition in a strict …
The authors study the geometry of lightlike hypersurfaces on pseudo-Riemannian manifolds $(M, g)$ of Lorentzian signature. Such hypersurfaces are of interest in general relativity since they can be models of different types of physical horizons. For a lightlike hypersurface $V \subset (M, g)$ of general type and for some special lightlike hypersurfaces (namely, for totally umbilical and belonging to a manifold $(M, g)$ of constant curvature), in a third-order neighborhood of a point $x \in V$, the authors construct invariant normalizations intrinsically connected with the geometry of $V$ and i…
The strong maximum principle is proved to hold for weak (in the sense of support functions) sub- and super-solutions to a class of quasi-linear elliptic equations that includes the mean curvature equation for $C^0$ spacelike hypersurfaces in a Lorentzian manifold. As one application a Lorentzian warped product splitting theorem is given.
The geometrical structures (in the sense of E. Cartan) are analyzed which underlie the gravitational radiation phenomenon. Among the results are : - the introduction of the adapted frame bundle to a congruence of isotropic hypersurfaces in a Lorentzian manifold, - the description of the reduced frame bundle which admits a unique radiation connection induced from the ambiant space-time one, - the determination of the automorphisms of an integrable radiation structure, - the repercussions of the geometry on the shape of the stress-energy tensor in the Einstein's field equations.
We review recent work on the local geometry and optimal regularity of Lorentzian manifolds with bounded curvature. Our main results provide an estimate of the injectivity radius of an observer, and a local canonical foliations by CMC (Constant Mean Curvature) hypersurfaces, together with spatially harmonic coordinates. In contrast with earlier results based on a global bound for derivatives of the curvature, our method requires only a sup-norm bound on the curvature near the given observer.
The intention of this article is to give a flavour of some global problems in General Relativity. We cover a variety of topics, some of them related to the fundamental concept of 'Cauchy hypersurfaces': (1) structure of globally hyperbolic spacetimes, (2) the relativistic initial value problem, (3) constant mean curvature surfaces, (4) singularity theorems, (5) cosmic censorship and Penrose inequality, (6) spinors and holonomy.
We define a Lorentzian distance function on the group of contactomorphisms of a closed contact manifold. This distance function is continuous with respect to the Hofer norm on the group of contactomorphisms defined by Shelukhin and finite if and only if the group of contactomorphisms is orderable. To prove this we show that intervals defined by the positivity relation are open with respect to the topology induced by the Hofer norm. For orderable Legendrian isotopy classes we show that the Chekanov-type metric defined by Rosen and Zhang is non-degenerate. In this case similar results hold for a…
