Thursday, February 28th, 2008
10:00am - 11:00am, in Wheatley 2-123

Vincent Bonini

McMaster University

Lost in hyperbolic space

Abstract: In Einstein's theory of General Relativity, asymptotically flat manifolds arise as space-like time slices of "realistic" space-time models of isolated gravitating systems. The postive mass theorem of Schoen and Yau then demonstrates a relation between local energy conditions of a space time solution to Einstein's equations and the "mass" of an asymptotically flat manifold. In this talk we will discuss a purely Riemannian interpretation of tehse results and introduce some recent results on asymptotically hyperbolic manifolds, which can be interpreted as an attempt to generalize the above relations to Einstein's theory in the presence of a negative cosmological constant.