arXiv subjects

Oliver Petersen

Publications and source records attributed to Oliver Petersen.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Dual modes in Kerr spacetimes and the Whiting transform: Mode stability revisited

The purpose of the paper is to place Whiting's classical growing mode stability argument, extended to real frequencies by Shlapentokh-Rothman for the scalar wave equation and by Andersson, Ma, Paganini and Whiting in general, in the framework of classical PDE theory. The key steps are: a description of the dual or adjoint modes, a singular phase space pairing argument which is technically executed via the Fourier transform, followed by a standard unique continuation result. One part of our description of the dual modes connects them directly to the standard mode solutions which are smooth over the event horizon. In the zero spin case, there is a geometric interpretation of this: quasinormal modes (for non-zero real frequencies) which are smooth across the future event horizon can be extended as distributional QNM solutions by 0 through the past event horizon. We also describe the behavior of mode solutions at the bifurcate sphere.

math.AP↗

arXiv2025

Conditional non-linear stability of Kerr-de Sitter spacetimes in the full subextremal range

We show the stability of Kerr-de Sitter black holes, in the full subextremal range, as solutions of the vacuum Einstein equation with a positive cosmological constant under the assumption that mode stability holds for these spacetimes. The method is similar to the (unconditional) proof in the slowly rotating case by Hintz and Vasy. The key novelties are the implementation of constraint damping in the full subextremal range as well as the verification of a subprincipal symbol condition at the trapped set.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

The asymptotic expansion of the spacetime metric at the event horizon

Hawking's local rigidity theorem, proven in the smooth setting by Alexakis-Ionescu-Klainerman, says that the event horizon of any stationary non-extremal black hole is a non-degenerate Killing horizon. In this paper, we prove that the full asymptotic expansion of any smooth vacuum metric at a non-degenerate Killing horizon is determined by the geometry of the horizon. This gives a new perspective on the black hole uniqueness conjecture. In spacetime dimension $4$, we also prove an existence theorem: Given any non-degenerate horizon geometry, Einstein's vacuum equations can be solved to infinite order at the horizon in a unique way (up to isometry). The latter is a gauge invariant version of Moncrief's classical existence result, without any restriction on the topology of the horizon. In the real analytic setting, the asymptotic expansion is shown to converge and we get well-posedness of this characteristic Cauchy problem.

math.DG↗

arXiv2024

Stationarity and Fredholm Theory in Subextremal Kerr-de Sitter Spacetimes

In a recent paper, we proved that solutions to linear wave equations in a subextremal Kerr-de Sitter spacetime have asymptotic expansions in quasinormal modes up to a decay order given by the normally hyperbolic trapping, extending the results of Vasy (2013). One central ingredient in the argument was a new definition of quasinormal modes, where a non-standard choice of stationary Killing vector field had to be used in order for the Fredholm theory to be applicable. In this paper, we show that there is in fact a variety of allowed choices of stationary Killing vector fields. In particular, the horizon Killing vector fields work for the analysis, in which case one of the corresponding ergoregions is completely removed.

math.AP↗

arXiv2023

Analyticity of quasinormal modes in the Kerr and Kerr-de Sitter spacetimes

We prove that quasinormal modes (or resonant states) for linear wave equations in the subextremal Kerr and Kerr-de Sitter spacetimes are real analytic. The main novelty of this paper is the observation that the bicharacteristic flow associated to the linear wave equations for quasinormal modes with respect to a suitable Killing vector field has a stable radial point source/sink structure rather than merely a generalized normal source/sink structure. The analyticity then follows by a recent result in the microlocal analysis of radial points by Galkowski and Zworski. The results can then be recast with respect to the standard Killing vector field.

math.AP↗

arXiv2023

Symmetries of vacuum spacetimes with a compact Cauchy horizon of constant non-zero surface gravity

We prove that any smooth vacuum spacetime containing a compact Cauchy horizon with surface gravity that can be normalised to a non-zero constant admits a Killing vector field. This proves a conjecture by Moncrief and Isenberg from 1983 under the assumption on the surface gravity and generalises previous results due to Moncrief-Isenberg and Friedrich-Rácz-Wald, where the generators of the Cauchy horizon were closed or densely filled a 2-torus. Consequently, the maximal globally hyperbolic vacuum development of generic initial data cannot be extended across a compact Cauchy horizon with surface gravity that can be normalised to a non-zero constant. Our result supports, thereby, the validity of the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in the considered special case. The proof consists of two main steps. First, we show that the Killing equation can be solved up to infinite order at the Cauchy horizon. Second, by applying a recent result of the first author on wave equations with initial data on a compact Cauchy horizon, we show that this Killing vector field extends to the globally hyperbolic region.

math.DG↗

arXiv2023

Formation of quiescent big bang singularities

Hawking's singularity theorem says that cosmological solutions arising from initial data with positive mean curvature have a past singularity. However, the nature of the singularity remains unclear. We therefore ask: If the initial hypersurface has sufficiently large mean curvature, does the curvature necessarily blow up towards the singularity? In case the eigenvalues of the expansion-normalized Weingarten map are everywhere distinct and satisfy a certain algebraic condition (which in 3+1 dimensions is equivalent to them being positive), we prove that this is the case in the CMC Einstein-non-linear scalar field setting. More specifically, we associate a set of geometric expansion-normalized quantities to any initial data set with positive mean curvature. These quantities are expected to converge, in the quiescent setting, in the direction of crushing big bang singularities. Our main result says that if the mean curvature is large enough, relative to an appropriate Sobolev norm of these geometric quantities, and if the algebraic condition is satisfied, then a quiescent (as opposed to oscillatory) big bang singularity with curvature blow-up forms. This provides a stable regime of big bang formation without requiring proximity to any particular class of background solutions. An important recent result by Fournodavlos, Rodnianski and Speck demonstrates stable big bang formation for all the spatially flat and spatially homogeneous solutions to the Einstein-scalar field equations satisfying the algebraic condition. Here we obtain analogous stability results for any solution inducing data at the singularity, in the sense introduced by the third author, in particular generalizing the aforementioned result. Moreover, we are able to prove both future and past global non-linear stability of a large class of spatially locally homogeneous solutions.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Wave equations in the Kerr-de Sitter spacetime: the full subextremal range

We prove that solutions to linear wave equations in a subextremal Kerr-de Sitter spacetime have asymptotic expansions in quasinormal modes up to a decay order given by the normally hyperbolic trapping, extending the existing results. The main novelties are a different way of obtaining a Fredholm setup that defines the quasinormal modes and a new analysis of the trapping of lightlike geodesics in the Kerr-de Sitter spacetime, both of which apply in the full subextremal range. In particular, this reduces the question of decay for solutions to wave equations to the question of mode stability.

math.AP↗