A Lorentzian manifold-with-boundary where causality breaks down due to shock singularities

Series
Geometry Topology Seminar
Time
Monday, October 7, 2024 - 2:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
Skiles 006
Speaker
Leo Abbrescia – Georgia Tech
Organizer
John Etnyre

We present a novel example of a Lorentzian manifold-with-boundary featuring a dramatic degeneracy in its deterministic and causal properties known as “causal bubbles” along its boundary. These issues arise because the regularity of the Lorentzian metric is below Lipschitz and fit within the larger framework of low regularity Lorentzian geometry. Although manifolds with causal bubbles were recently introduced in 2012 as a mathematical curiosity, our example comes from studying the fundamental equations of fluid mechanics and shock singularities which arise therein. No prior knowledge of Lorentzian geometry or fluid mechanics will be assumed for this talk.