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Gregory J. Galloway

Publications and source records attributed to Gregory J. Galloway.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2021

Remarks on the existence of CMC Cauchy surfaces

As is well known, constant mean curvature (CMC) spacelike hypersurfaces play an important role in solving the Einstein equations, both in solving the contraints and the evolution equations. In this paper we review the CMC existence result obtained by the authors in [10] and consider some new existence results motivated by a conjecture of Dilts and Holst [8]. We also address some issues concerning the conformal structure of cosmological spacetimes.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2021

A Bakry-Émery Almost Splitting Result With Applications to the Topology of Black Holes

The almost splitting theorem of Cheeger-Colding is established in the setting of almost nonnegative generalized $m$-Bakry-Émery Ricci curvature, in which $m$ is positive and the associated vector field is not necessarily required to be the gradient of a function. In this context it is shown that with a diameter upper bound and volume lower bound the fundamental group of such manifolds is almost abelian. Furthermore, extensions of well-known results concerning Ricci curvature lower bounds are given for generalized $m$-Bakry-Émery Ricci curvature. These include: the first Betti number bound of Gromov and Gallot, Anderson's finiteness of fundamental group isomorphism types, volume comparison, the Abresch-Gromoll inequality, and a Cheng-Yau gradient estimate. Finally, this analysis is applied to stationary vacuum black holes in higher dimensions to find that low temperature horizons must have limited topology, similar to the restrictions exhibited by (extreme) horizons of zero temperature.

math.DG↗
arXiv2020

Photon surfaces with equipotential time-slices

Photon surfaces are timelike, totally umbilic hypersurfaces of Lorentzian spacetimes. In the first part of this paper, we locally characterize all possible photon surfaces in a class of static, spherically symmetric spacetimes that includes Schwarzschild, Reissner--Nordström, Schwarzschild-anti de Sitter, etc., in $n+1$ dimensions. In the second part, we prove that any static, vacuum, "asymptotically isotropic" $n+1$-dimensional spacetime that possesses what we call an "equipotential" and "outward directed" photon surface is isometric to the Schwarzschild spacetime of the same (necessarily positive) mass, using a uniqueness result by the first named author.

math.DG↗
arXiv2020

A conformal infinity approach to asymptotically $\text{AdS}_2\times S^{n-1}$ spacetimes

It is well known that the spacetime $\text{AdS}_2\times S^2$ arises as the `near horizon' geometry of the extremal Reisser-Nordstrom solution, and for that reason it has been studied in connection with the AdS/CFT correspondence. Motivated by a conjectural viewpoint of Juan Maldacena, the authors in [4] studied the rigidity of asymptotically $\text{AdS}_2\times S^2$ spacetimes satisfying the null energy condition. In this paper, we take an entirely different and more general approach to the asymptotics based on the notion of conformal infinity. This involves a natural modification of the usual notion of timelike conformal infinity for asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes. As a consequence we are able to obtain a variety of new results, including similar results to those in [4] (but now allowing both higher dimensions and more than two ends) and a version of topological censorship.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2019

Some scalar curvature warped product splitting theorems

We present several rigidity results for Riemannian manifolds $(M^n,g)$ with scalar curvature $S \ge -n(n-1)$ (or $S\ge 0$), and having compact boundary $N$ satisfying a related mean curvature inequality. The proofs make use of results on marginally outer trapped surfaces applied to appropriate initial data sets. One of the results involves an analysis of Obata's equation on manifolds with boundary. This result is relevant to recent work of Lan-Hsuan Huang and the second author concerning the rigidity of asymptotically locally hyperbolic manifolds with zero mass.

math.DG↗
arXiv2019

Roads to topological censorship

In this note we review some aspects of topological censorship. We present several (actually five) alternative sets of hypotheses which allow the proof of a topological censorship theorem for spacetimes with conformal completions at infinity and vanishing cosmological constant.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2019

Uniqueness and energy bounds for static AdS metrics

We show that Wang's proof of uniqueness of Anti-de Sitter spacetime can be adapted to provide uniqueness results for strictly static asymptotically locally hyperbolic vacuum metrics with toroidal infinity, and to prove negativity of the free energy $E-TS$ of asymptotically AdS black holes with higher-genus horizons.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2019

Existence of CMC Cauchy surfaces and spacetime splitting

In this paper, we review results on the existence (and nonexistence) of constant mean curvature spacelike hypersurfaces in the cosmological setting, and discuss the connection to the spacetime splittng problem. It is a pleasure to dedicate this paper to Robert Bartnik, who has made fundamental contributions to this area.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2018

Rigidity of asymptotically $AdS_2 \times S^2$ spacetimes

The spacetime $AdS_2 \times S^2$ is well known to arise as the 'near horizon' geometry of the extremal Reissner-Nordstrom solution, and for that reason it has been studied in connection with the AdS/CFT correspondence. Here we consider asymptotically $AdS_2 \times S^2$ spacetimes that obey the null energy condition (or a certain averaged version thereof). Supporting a conjectural viewpoint of Juan Maldacena, we show that any such spacetime must have a special geometry similar in various respects to $AdS_2 \times S^2$, and under certain circumstances must be isometric to $AdS_2 \times S^2$.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2018

Weakly trapped surfaces in asymptotically de Sitter spacetimes

It is a standard fact that trapped or marginally trapped surfaces are not visible from conformal infinity, under the usual set of conditions on matter fields and the conformal completion, provided that the cosmological constant is non-positive. In this note we show that the situation is more delicate in the presence of a positive cosmological constant: we present examples of visible marginally trapped surfaces, and we provide a set of natural conditions which guarantee non-visibility.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2018

Rigidity of outermost MOTS - the initial data version

In [5], a rigidity result was obtained for outermost marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) that do not admit metrics of positive scalar curvature. This allowed one to treat the "borderline case" in the author's work with R. Schoen concerning the topology of higher dimensional black holes [8]. The proof of this rigidity result involved bending the initial data manifold in the vicinity of the MOTS within the ambient spacetime. In this note we show how to circumvent this step, and thereby obtain a pure initial data version of this rigidity result and its consequence concerning the topology of black holes.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2018

Topology and singularities in cosmological spacetimes obeying the null energy condition

We consider globally hyperbolic spacetimes with compact Cauchy surfaces in a setting compatible with the presence of a positive cosmological constant. More specifically, for 3+1 dimensional spacetimes which satisfy the null energy condition and contain a future expanding compact Cauchy surface, we establish a precise connection between the topology of the Cauchy surfaces and the occurrence of past singularities. In addition to (a refinement of) the Penrose singularity theorem, the proof makes use of some recent advances in the topology of 3-manifolds and of certain fundamental existence results for minimal surfaces.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2017

Rigidity in vacuum under conformal symmetry

Moitvated in part by [3], in this note we obtain a rigidity result for globally hyperbolic vacuum spacetimes in arbitrary dimension that admit a timelike conformal Killing vector field. Specifically, we show that if M is a Ricci flat, timelike geodesically complete spacetime with compact Cauchy surfaces that admits a timelike conformal Killing field X, then M must split as a metric product, and X must be Killing. This gives a partial proof of the Bartnik splitting conjecture in the vacuum setting.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2017

Timelike completeness as an obstruction to $C^0$-extensions

The study of low regularity (in-)extendibility of Lorentzian manifolds is motivated by the question whether a given solution to the Einstein equations can be extended (or is maximal) as a weak solution. In this paper we show that a timelike complete and globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold is $C^0$-inextendible. For the proof we make use of the result, recently established by Sämann [17], that even for \emph{continuous} Lorentzian manifolds that are globally hyperbolic, there exists a length-maximizing causal curve between any two causally related points.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2017

Some Remarks on the $C^0$-(in)extendibility of Spacetimes

The existence, established over the past number of years and supporting earlier work of Ori [14], of physically relevant black hole spacetimes that admit $C^0$ metric extensions beyond the future Cauchy horizon, while being $C^2$-inextendible, has focused attention on fundamental issues concerning the strong cosmic censorship conjecture. These issues were recently discussed in the work of Jan Sbierski [17], in which he established the (nonobvious) fact that the Schwarschild solution in global Kruskal-Szekeres coordinates is $C^0$-inextendible. In this paper we review aspects of Sbierski's methodology in a general context, and use similar techniques, along with some new observations, to consider the $C^0$-inextendibility of open FLRW cosmological models. We find that a certain special class of open FLRW spacetimes, which we have dubbed `Milne-like,' actually admit $C^0$ extensions through the big bang. For spacetimes that are not Milne-like, we prove some inextendibility results within the class of spherically symmetric spacetimes.

math.DG↗