English

Hawking's singularity theorem for Lipschitz Lorentzian metrics

Differential Geometry 2025-12-15 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We prove Hawking's singularity theorem for spacetime metrics of local Lipschitz regularity. The proof rests on (1) new estimates for the Ricci curvature of regularising smooth metrics that are based upon a quite general Friedrichs-type lemma and (2) the replacement of the usual focusing techniques for timelike geodesics -- which in the absence of a classical ODE-theory for the initial value problem are no longer available -- by a worldvolume estimate based on a segment-type inequality that allows one to control the volume of the set of points in a spacelike surface that possess long maximisers.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.18450,
  title  = {Hawking's singularity theorem for Lipschitz Lorentzian metrics},
  author = {Matteo Calisti and Melanie Graf and Eduardo Hafemann and Michael Kunzinger and Roland Steinbauer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.18450},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

30 pages, final version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:25:51.185Z