arXiv research

Penrose limit results for specific 3-surfaces in space-time.

We give a short elementary proof that a Khovanov-type link homology constructed from a diagonalisable Frobenius algebra is degenerate.

Geodesic flows with diagonalisable integrals are orthogonal.

New findings on plane waves in 3D spacetimes, showing non-unimodular elliptic plane waves are unique.

Study compact plane waves, showing they are essentially standard.

We explore the plane-wave limit of homogeneous spacetimes. For plane-wave limits along homogeneous geodesics the limit is known to be homogeneous and we exhibit the limiting metric in terms of Lie algebraic data. This simplifies many calculations and we illustrate this with several examples. We also investigate the beh…

Mathematical treatment of plane waves, proving their inextendibility and completeness.

Extends method for solving certain hydrodynamic systems.

The paper classifies tensors on specific Lorentzian metrics.

The paper explores conformal groups on plane waves and proves a conjecture in locally homogeneous settings.

Study of Lorentzian manifolds with specific transformations.

Classifies 1-connected Lorentzian manifolds with essential conformal groups.

The paper studies symmetries and conservation laws of non-diagonalisable hydrodynamic systems.

We wish to attack the problems that H.~Anciaux and K.~Panagiotidou posed in [1], for non-degenerate real hypersurfaces in indefinite complex projective space. We will slightly change these authors' point of view, obtaining cleaner equations for the almost contact metric structure. To make the theory meaningful, we cons…

Departing from the observation that the Penrose limit of AdS_3 x S^3 is a group contraction in the sense of Inonu and Wigner, we explore the relation between the symmetric D-branes of AdS_3 x S^3 and those of its Penrose limit, a six-dimensional symmetric plane wave analogous to the four-dimensional Nappi--Witten space…

We study the class $\mathcal{K}_{2}+\mathcal{K}_{4}$ of homogeneous pseudo-Kähler structures in the strongly degenerate case. The local form and the holonomy of a pseudo-Kähler manifold admitting such a structure is obtained, leading to a possible complex generalization of homogeneous plane waves. The same question is …

We show that every n-dimensional locally homogeneous pp-wave is a plane wave, provided it is indecomposable and its curvature operator, when acting on $2$-forms, has rank greater than one. As a consequence we obtain that indecomposable, Ricci-flat locally homogeneous pp-waves are plane waves. This generalises a classic…

We prove that for an algebraic curvature tensor on a pseudo-Euclidean space, the Jordan-Osserman condition implies the Rakić duality principle, and that the Osserman condition and the duality principle are equivalent in the diagonalisable case.

Diagonalizes tautological classes of definite 4-manifolds.

We show that generalized plane wave manifolds are complete, strongly geodesically convex, Osserman, Szabo, and Ivanov-Petrova. We show their holonomy groups are nilpotent and that all the local Weyl scalar invariants of these manifolds vanish. We construct isometry invariants on certain families of these manifolds whic…

New metrics derived from geodesics simplify semi-Riemannian geometry.

We exhibit an infinite family of rational homology balls which embed smoothly but not symplectically in the complex projective plane. We also obtain a new lattice embedding obstruction from Donaldson's diagonalisation theorem, and use this to show that no two of our examples may be embedded disjointly.

We generalise theorems of Cochran-Lickorish and Owens-Strle to the case of links with more than one component. This enables the use of linking forms on double branched covers, Heegaard Floer correction terms, and Donaldson's diagonalisation theorem to complete the table of unlinking numbers for nonsplit prime links wit…

The notion of a causal boundary for a spacetime has been a controversial topic during the last three decades. Moreover, recently the role of the boundary in the AdS/CFT correspondence for plane waves, have stimulated its redefinition with some possible alternatives. Our aim is threefold. First, to review the different …

Derives a formula for fermion dimensions in spherically symmetric monopole backgrounds.

We show that a Lorentzian homogeneous space admitting a homogeneous structure of type T1 + T3 is either a (locally) symmetric space or a singular homogeneous plane wave.

We show that the conformal Penrose limit is an ordinary plane wave limit in a higher dimensional framework which resolves the spacetime singularity. The higher dimensional framework is provided by Ricci-flat manifolds which are of the form M_D = M_d x B, where M_d is an Einstein spacetime that has a negative cosmologic…

Study how algebraic conditions on isotropy group affect Lorentzian homogeneous space geometry.

We give a summary of recent results on the explicit local form of the second-order symmetric Lorentzian manifolds in arbitrary dimension, and its global version. These spacetimes turn out to be essentially a specific subclass of plane waves.

This is the second of a series of papers dealing with an analog in Arakelov geometry of the holomorphic Lefschetz fixed point formula. We use the main result of the first paper to prove a residue formula "`a la Bott" for arithmetic characteristic classes living on arithmetic varieties acted upon by a diagonalisable tor…

New integrable systems constructed for non-diagonal Killing tensors.

It is shown that, in four dimensions, it is possible to introduce coordinates so that an analytic metric locally takes block diagonal form. i.e. one can find coordinates such that $g_{αβ} = 0$ for $(α, β) \in S$ where $S = {(1, 3), (1, 4), (2, 3), (2, 4)}$. We call a coordinate system in which the metric takes this for…

Given a globally hyperbolic spacetime endowed with a complete lightlike Killing vector field and a complete Cauchy hypersurface, we characterize the points which can be connected by geodesics. A straightforward consequence is the geodesic connectedness of globally hyperbolic generalized plane waves with a complete Cauc…

It is shown that locally conformally flat Lorentzian gradient Ricci solitons are locally isometric to a Robertson-Walker warped product, if the gradient of the potential function is non null, and to a plane wave, if the gradient of the potential function is null. The latter gradient Ricci solitons are necessarily stead…

Extends Penrose limit to Finsler spacetimes.

We prove that the Penrose limit of a spacetime along a homogeneous geodesic is a homogeneous plane wave spacetime and that the Penrose limit of a reductive homogeneous spacetime along a homogeneous geodesic is a Cahen--Wallach space. We then consider several homogenous examples to show that these results are indeed sha…

As a difference with the positive-definite Riemannian case, in the Lorentzian case there exists proper second-order symmetric spacetimes, i.e., those with vanishing second covariant derivative of the Riemannian tensor ($R_{λμνρ;α;β}=0$) which are not locally symmetric ($R_{λμνρ;α}\neq 0$). In fact, they lie in the clas…

We obtain constraints on the topology of families of smooth $4$-manifolds arising from a finite dimensional approximation of the families Seiberg-Witten monopole map. Amongst other results these constraints include a families generalisation of Donaldson's diagonalisation theorem and Furuta's $10/8$ theorem. As an appli…

We exhibit a family of generalized plane wave manifolds of signature (2,2). The geodesics in these manifolds extend for infinite time (i.e. they are complete), they are spacelike and timelike Jordan Osserman, and they are spacelike and timelike Jordan Ivanov-Petrova. Some are irreducible symmetric spaces. Some are homo…

New metrics link Kähler and pp-wave spacetimes.

Recently, classical results on completeness of trajectories of Hamiltonian systems obtained at the beginning of the seventies, have been revisited, improved and applied to Lorentzian Geometry. Our aim here is threefold: to give explicit proofs of some technicalities in the background of the specialists, to show that th…

In his 2011 work, Maas has shown that the law of any time-reversible continuous-time Markov chain with finite state space evolves like a gradient flow of the relative entropy with respect to its stationary distribution. In this work we show the converse to the above by showing that if the relative law of a Markov chain…

Starting from the recent classification of quotients of Freund--Rubin backgrounds in string theory of the type AdS_{p+1} x S^q by one-parameter subgroups of isometries, we investigate the physical interpretation of the associated quotients by discrete cyclic subgroups. We establish which quotients have well-behaved cau…

The main result of this paper is that a Lorentzian manifold is locally conformally equivalent to a manifold with recurrent lightlike vector field and totally isotropic Ricci tensor if and only if its conformal tractor holonomy admits a 2-dimensional totally isotropic invariant subspace. Furthermore, for semi-Riemannian…

Study of special Lorentzian Lie groups with 4D isometry group, finding all are non-gradient expanding Ricci solitons.

We consider bosonic supersymmetric backgrounds of ten-dimensional conformal supergravity. Up to local conformal isometry, we classify the maximally supersymmetric backgrounds, determine their conformal symmetry superalgebras and show how they arise as near-horizon geometries of certain half-BPS backgrounds or as a plan…

Geometric flow on curves in S^3 generates YO equations solutions.

The slicing number of a knot, $u_s(K)$, is the minimum number of crossing changes required to convert $K$ to a slice knot. This invariant is bounded above by the unknotting number and below by the slice genus $g_s(K)$. We show that for many knots, previous bounds on unknotting number obtained by Ozsvath and Szabo and b…