Embedding Signature-Changing Manifolds: A Braneworld and Kaluza-Klein Perspective
Abstract
We investigate a class of semi-Riemannian manifolds characterized by smooth metric signature changes with a transverse radical. This class includes spacetimes relevant to cosmological models such as the Hartle-Hawking "no boundary" proposal, where a Riemannian manifold transitions smoothly into a Lorentzian spacetime without boundaries or singularities. For this class, we prove the existence of global isometric embeddings into higher-dimensional pseudo-Euclidean spaces. We then strengthen this result by demonstrating that a specific type of global isometric embedding, which we term an -global embedding, also exists into both Minkowski space and Misner space. For the canonical -dimensional signature-changing model, we explicitly construct a full global isometric embedding into -dimensional Minkowski and Misner spaces, a significantly stronger result than an -global embedding for this specific case. This embedding framework provides new geometric tools for studying signature change and braneworlds through the geometry of submanifolds embedded in a bulk, thus presenting a mathematically well-defined approach to these phenomena.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2508.08662,
title = {Embedding Signature-Changing Manifolds: A Braneworld and Kaluza-Klein Perspective},
author = {N. E. Rieger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.08662},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
In the revised version, some LaTeX compilation errors have been fixed, and the proof of Proposition 1.13 has been corrected. 29 pages, 3 figures