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arXiv · 2604.09830

Birkhoff rigidity from a covariant optical seed

D. A. Easson
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Abstract

We present a local seed-to--Kerr--Schild route to Birkhoff rigidity in four-dimensional spherical vacuum gravity. On the two-dimensional orbit space, the areal radius $r$ determines a scalar $F:=-(\nabla r)^2$, and the reduced vacuum equations imply $F(r)=1-2M/r$. We show that the normalized one-forms $dr/F$ and $(*dr)/F$ are closed, so that the null combinations $F^{-1}(dr\pm *dr)$ are exact null seed forms. Integrating these yields local Eddington--Finkelstein coordinates in which the metric takes Kerr--Schild form over a flat background. We then prove the corresponding uniqueness statement in the stationary optical sector: spherical symmetry forces the inverse optical seed $\mathcal R$ to equal $\pm r$, equivalently the optical seed $\rho$ to equal $\mp 1/r$, and the resulting seed data reconstruct the Schwarzschild family. Thus, Birkhoff rigidity is paired with a spherical converse theorem in the stationary optical framework: Schwarzschild is the unique spherically symmetric stationary vacuum Kerr--Schild geometry generated by a nowhere-vanishing optical seed.

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D. A. Easson. 2026-04-10. Birkhoff rigidity from a covariant optical seed. https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.09830

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