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arXiv · 2003.13583

The Hawking Energy on the Past Lightcone in Cosmology

Dennis Stock
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Abstract

This work studies the Hawking energy in a cosmological context. The past lightcone of a point in spacetime is the natural geometric structure closely linked to cosmological observations. By slicing the past lightcone into a 1-parameter family of spacelike 2-surfaces, the evolution of the Hawking energy down the lightcone is studied. Strong gravitational fields may generate lightcone self-intersections and wave front singularities. We show that in the presence of swallow-tail type singularities, the Hawking energy and its variation along the null generators of the lightcone remains well-defined and subsequently discuss its positivity and monotonicity.

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Dennis Stock. 2020-10-15. The Hawking Energy on the Past Lightcone in Cosmology. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382%2Faba182

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