Bubbles Bad; Ripples Good

… Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitates involvente fluxiones invenire et vice versa …

Category: Requires upper level university maths

Decay of Waves IV: Numerical Interlude

I offer two videos. In both videos the same colour scheme is used: we have four waves in red, green, blue, and magenta. The four represent the amplitudes of spherically symmetric free waves on four different types of spatial geometries: 1 dimension flat space, 2 dimensional flat space, 3 dimensional flat space, and a 3 dimensional asymptotically flat manifold with “trapping” (has closed geodesics). Can you tell which is which? (Answer below the fold.)

Read the rest of this entry »

“The asymptotically hyperboloidal is not asymptotically null.”

By way of Roland Donninger, I learned today of the statement above which is apparently well-known in the numerical relativity community.

It may seem intuitively surprising: after all, the archetype of an asymptotically hyperboloidal surface is the hyperboloid as embedded in Minkowski space. Let (t,r, \omega)\in \mathbb{R}\times\mathbb{R}_+ \times \mathbb{S}^{d-1} be the spherical coordinate system for the Minkowski space \mathbb{R}^{1,d}, the hyperboloid embeds in it as the surface t^2 - r^2 = 1. If you draw a picture we see clearly that the surface is asymptotic to the null cone t = |r|

The key, however, lies in the definition. For better or for worse, the definition under which the titular statement makes sense the following:

Definition
Let (M,g) be an asymptotically simple space-time (or one for which one can define a Penrose compactification), and let (\bar{M},\Omega^2 g) be the compactified space-time. We say that a hypersurface \Sigma \subset M is asymptotically null if the \bar{\Sigma}\cap \bar{M} transversely and the tangent space of \bar{\Sigma} is null along \partial\bar{M}.

Now suppose near \partial\bar{M} we can foliate via a double-null foliation (u,v), with \partial\bar{M} = \{ u = 0\}. Let x be a coordinate on \partial\bar{M} so that (u,v,x) form a coordinate system for a neighborhood of \partial\bar{M}. Assume that our surface \Sigma can be written as a graph

v = \phi(u,x)

where \phi is a C^3 function. Then the asymptotically null condition is just that \partial_u \phi |_{u = 0} = 0. Taking a Taylor expansion we have that this means

v \approx \phi_{\infty}(x) + \phi^{(2)}_{\infty}(x) u^2.

For the usual conformal compactification of Minkowski space, we have u = \frac{\pi}{2} - \cot^{-1}\left( \frac{1}{r+t}\right). Hence we require that an asymptotically null surface to have convergence to the null surface at rate O(1/(r+t)^2) (if \phi is sufficiently differentiable; if we relax the differentiability at infinity we see that the above condition allows us to relax all the way to O(1/(r+t)^{1+}), but O(1/(r+t)) is not admissible).

On the other hand, the hyperboloid is given by (r+t)(r-t) = -1 \implies r-t = v = O(1/(r+t)) and so is not asymptotically null. And indeed, we can also check by direct computation that in the usual conformal compactification of Minkowski space, the limit of the hyperboloid at null infinity is space-like.

Gauge invariance, geometrically

A somewhat convoluted chain of events led me to think about the geometric description of partial differential equations. And a question I asked myself this morning was

Question
What is the meaning of gauge invariance in the jet-bundle treatment of partial differential equations?

The answer, actually, is quite simple.

Review of geometric formulation PDE
We consider here abstract PDEs formulated geometrically. All objects considered will be smooth. For more about the formal framework presented here, a good reference is H. Goldschmidt, “Integrability criteria for systems of nonlinear partial differential equations”, JDG (1967) 1:269–307.

A quick review: the background manifold X is assumed (here we take a slightly more restrictive point of view) to be a connected smooth manifold. The configuration space \mathcal{C} is defined to be a fibred manifold p:\mathcal{C}\to X. By J^r\mathcal{C} we refer to the fibred manifold of r-jets of \mathcal{C}, whose projection p^r = \pi^r_0 \circ p where for r > s we use \pi^r_s: J^r\mathcal{C}\to J^s\mathcal{C} for the canonical projection.

A field is a (smooth) section \phi \subset \Gamma \mathcal{C}. A simple example that capture most of the usual cases: if we are studying mappings between manifolds \phi: X\to N, then we take \mathcal{C} = N\times X the trivial fibre bundle. The s-jet operator naturally sends j^s: \Gamma\mathcal{C} \ni \phi \mapsto j^s\phi \in \Gamma J^r\mathcal{C}.

A partial differential equation of order r is defined to be a fibred submanifold J^r\mathcal{C} \supset R^r \to X. A field is said to solve the PDE if j^r\phi \subset R^r.

In the usual case of systems of PDEs on Euclidean space, X is taken to be \mathbb{R}^d and \mathcal{C} = \mathbb{R}^n\times X the trivial vector bundle. A system of m PDEs of order r is usually taken to be F(x,\phi, \partial\phi, \partial^2\phi, \ldots, \partial^r\phi) = 0 where

\displaystyle F: X\times \mathbb{R}^n \times \mathbb{R}^{dn} \times \mathbb{R}^{\frac{1}{2}d(d+1)n} \times \cdots \times \mathbb{R}^{{d+r-1 \choose r} n} \to \mathbb{R}^m

is some function. We note that the domain of F can be identified in this case with J^r\mathcal{C}, We can then extend F to \tilde{F}: J^r\mathcal{C} \ni c \mapsto (F(c),p^r(c)) \in \mathbb{R}^m\times X a fibre bundle morphism.

If we assume that \tilde{F} has constant rank, then \tilde{F}^{-1}(0) is a fibred submanifold of J^r\mathcal{C}, and this is our differential equation.

Gauge invariance
In this frame work, the gauge invariance of a partial differential equation relative to certain symmetry groups can be captured by requiring R^r be an invariant submanifold.

More precisely, we take

Definition
A symmetry/gauge group \mathcal{G} is a subgroup of \mathrm{Diff}(\mathcal{C}), with the property that for any g\in\mathcal{G}, there exists a g'\in \mathrm{Diff}(X) with p\circ g = g' \circ p.

It is important we are looking at the diffeomorphism group for \mathcal{C}, not J^r\mathcal{C}. In general diffeomorphisms of J^r\mathcal{C} will not preserve holonomy for sections of the form j^r\phi, a condition that is essential for solving PDEs. The condition that the symmetry operation “commutes with projections” is to ensure that g:\Gamma\mathcal{C}\to\Gamma\mathcal{C}, which in particular guarantees that g extends to a diffeomorphism of J^rC with itself that commutes with projections.

From this point of view, a (system of) partial differential equation(s) R^r is said to be \mathcal{G}-invariant if for every g\in\mathcal{G}, we have g(R^r) \subset R^r.

We give two examples showing that this description agrees with the classical notions.

Gauge theory. In classical gauged theories, the configuration space \mathcal{C} is a fibre bundle with structure group G which acts on the fibres. A section of G\times X \to X induces a diffeomorphism of \mathcal{C} by fibre-wise action. In fact, the gauge symmetry is a fibre bundle morphism (fixes the base points).

General relativity. In general relativity, the configuration space is the space of Lorentzian metrics. So the background manifold is the space-time X. And the configuration space is the open submanifold of S^2T^*X given by non-degenerate symmetric bilinear forms with signature (-+++). A diffeomorphism \Psi:X\to X induces T^*\Psi = (\Psi^{-1})^*: T^*X \to T^*X and hence a configuration space diffeomorphism that commutes with projection. It is in this sense that Einstein’s equations are diffeomorphism invariant.

Notice of course, this formulation does not contain the “physical” distinction between global and local gauge transformations. For example, for a linear PDE (so \mathcal{C} is a vector bundle and R^r is closed under linear operations), the trivial “global scaling” of a solution is considered in this frame work a gauge symmetry, though it is generally ignored in physics.

Extensions of (co)vector fields to tangent bundles

I am reading Sasaki’s original paper on the construction of the Sasaki metric (a canonical Riemannian metric on the tangent bundle of a Riemannian manifold), and the following took me way too long to understand. So I’ll write it down in case I forgot in the future.

In section two of the paper, Sasaki consider “extended transformations and extended tensors”. Basically he wanted to give a way to “lift” tensor fields from a manifold to tensor fields of the same rank on its tangent bundle. And he did so in the language of coordinate changes, which geometrical content is a bit hard to parse. I’ll discuss his construction in a bit. But first I’ll talk about something different.

The trivial lifts
Let M, N be smooth manifolds, and let f:M\to N a submersion. Then we can trivially lift covariant objects on N to equivalent objects on M by the pull-back operation. To define the pull-back, we start with a covariant tensor field \vartheta \in \Gamma T^0_kN, and set f^*\vartheta \in \Gamma T^0_kM by the formula:

\displaystyle f^*\vartheta(X_1,\ldots,X_k) = \vartheta(df\circ X_1, \ldots, df\circ X_k)

where the X_1, \ldots, X_k \in T_pM, and we use that df(p): T_pM \to T_{f(p)}N. Observe that for a function g: N \to \mathbb{R}, the pull-back is simply f^*g = g\circ f :M\to N\to\mathbb{R}.

On the other hand, for contravariant tensor fields, the pull-back is not uniquely defined: using that f is a submersion, we have that TM / \ker(df) = TN, so while, given a vector field v on N, we can always find a vector field w on M such that df(w) = v, the vector field w is only unique up to an addition of a vector field that lies in the kernel of df. If, however, that M is Riemannian, then we can take the orthogonal decomposition of TM into the kernel and its complement, thereby getting a well-defined lift of the vector field (in other words, by exploiting the identification between the tangent and cotangent spaces).

Remarkably, the extensions defined by Sasaki is not this one.

(Let me just add a remark here: given two manifolds, once one obtain a well defined way of lifting vectors, covectors, and functions from one to the other, such that they are compatible (\vartheta^*(v^*) = [\vartheta(v)]^*), one can extend this mapping to arbitrary tensor fields.)

The extensions defined by Sasaki
As seen above, if we just rely on the canonical submersion \pi:TM\to M, we cannot generally extend vector fields. Sasaki’s construction, however, strongly exploits the fact that TM is the tangent bundle of M.

We start by looking at the vector field extension defined by equation (2.6) of the linked paper. We first observe that a vector field v on a manifold M is a section of the tangent bundle. That is, v is a map M\to TM such that the composition with the canonical projection \pi\circ v:M\to M is the identity map. This implies, using the chain rule, that the map d(\pi\circ v)= d\pi \circ dv: TM\to TM is also the identity map. Now, d\pi: T(TM) \to TM is the projection induced by the projection map \pi, which is different from the canonical projection \pi_2: T(TM) \to TM from the tangent bundle of a manifold to the manifold itself. However, a Proposition of Kobayashi (see “Theory of Connections” (1957), Proposition 1.4), shows that there exists an automorphism \alpha:T(TM) \to T(TM) such that d\pi \circ \alpha = \pi_2 and \pi_2\circ\alpha = d\pi. So v as a differential mapping induces a map \alpha\circ dv: TM \to T(TM), which is a map from the tangent bundle TM to the double tangent bundle T(TM), which when composed with the canonical projection \pi_2 is the identity. In other words, \alpha\circ dv is a vector field on TM.

Next we look at the definition (2.7) for one-forms. Give \vartheta a one-form on M, it induces naturally a scalar function on TM: for p\in M, v\in T_pM, we have \vartheta: TM\to \mathbb{R} taking value \vartheta(p)\cdot v. Hence its differential d\vartheta is a one-form over TM.

Now, what about scalar functions? Let \vartheta be a one-form and v be a vector field on M, we consider the pairing of their extensions to TM. It is not too hard to check that the corresponding scalar field to \vartheta(v), when evaluated at (p,w)\in TM, is in fact d(\vartheta(v))|_{p,w}, the derivative of the scalar function \vartheta(v) in the direction of w at point p. In general, the compatible lift of scalar fields g:M\to \mathbb{R} to TM is the function \tilde{g}(p,v) = dg(p)[v].

Using this we can extend the construction to arbitrary tensor fields, and a simple computation yields that this construction is in fact identical, for rank-2 tensors, to the expressions given in (2.8), (2.9), and (2.10) in the paper.

The second extension
The above extension is not the only map sending vectors on M to vectors on TM. In the statement of Lemmas 3 there is also another construction. Given a vector field v, it induces a one parameter family of diffeomorphisms on TM via that maps \psi_t(p,w) = (p, w+vt). Its differential \frac{d}{dt}\psi_t|_{t=0} is a vector field over TM.

The construction in the statement of Lemma 4 is the trivial one mentioned at the start of this post.

Decay of waves IIIb: tails for homogeneous linear equation on curved background

Now we will actually show that the specific decay properties of the linear wave equation on Minkowski space–in particular the strong Huygens’ principle–is very strongly tied to the global geometry of that space-time. In particular, we’ll build, by hand, an example of a space-time where geometry itself induces back-scattering, and even linear, homogeneous waves will exhibit a tail.

For convenience, the space-time we construct will be spherically symmetric, and we will only consider spherically symmetric solutions of the wave equation on it. We will also focus on the 1+3 dimensional case. Read the rest of this entry »

Decay of waves IIIa: nonlinear tails in Minkowski space redux

Before we move on to the geometric case, I want to flesh out the nonlinear case mentioned in the end of the last post a bit more. Recall that it was shown for generic nonlinear (actually semilinear; for quasilinear and worse equations we cannot use Duhamel’s principle) wave equations, if we put in compact support for the initial data, we expect the first iterate to exhibit a tail. One may ask whether it is possible that, in fact, this is an artifact of the successive approximation scheme; that in fact somehow it always transpires that a conspiracy happens, and all the higher order iterates cancel out the tail coming from the first iterate. This is rather unlikely, owing to the fact that the convergence to \phi_\infty is dominated by a geometric series. But to just make double sure, here we give a nonlinear system of wave equations such that the successive approximation scheme converges after finitely many steps (in fact, after the first iterate), and so we can also explicitly compute the rate of decay for the nonlinear tail. While the decay rate is not claimed to be generic (though it is), the existence of one such example with a fixed decay rate shows that for a statement quantifying over all nonlinear wave equations, it would be impossible to demonstrate better decay rate than the one exhibited. Read the rest of this entry »

Decay of waves IIb: Minkowski space, with right-hand side

In the first half of this second part of the series, we considered solutions to the linear, homogeneous wave equation on flat Minkowski space, and showed that for compactly supported initial data, we have strong Huygens’ principle. We further made references to the fact that this behaviour is expected to be unstable. In this post, we will further illustrate this instability by looking at Equation 1 first with a fixed source F = F(t,x), and then with a nonlinearity F = F(t,x, \phi, \partial\phi).

Duhamel’s Principle

To study how one can incorporate inhomogeneous terms into a linear equation, and to get a qualitative grasp of how the source term contributes to the solution, we need to discuss the abstract method known as Duhamel’s Principle. We start by illustrating this for a very simple ordinary differential equation.

Consider the ODE satisfied by a scalar function \alpha:

Equation 13
\displaystyle \frac{d}{ds}\alpha(s) = k(s)\alpha(s) + \beta(s)

when \beta\equiv 0, we can easily solve the equation with integration factors

\displaystyle \alpha(s) = \alpha(0) e^{\int_0^s k(t) dt}

Using this as a sort of an ansatz, we can solve the inhomogeneous equation as follows. For convenience we denote by K(s) = \int_0^s k(t) dt the anti-derivative of k. Then multiplying Equation 13 through by \exp -K(s), we have that

Equation 14
\displaystyle \frac{d}{ds} \left( e^{-K(s)}\alpha(s)\right) = e^{-K(s)}\beta(s)

which we solve by integrating

Equation 15
\displaystyle \alpha(s) = e^{K(s)}\alpha(0) + e^{K(s)} \int_0^s e^{-K(t)}\beta(t) dt

If we write K(s;t) = \int_t^s k(u) du, then we can rewrite Equation 15 as given by an integral operator

Equation 15′
\displaystyle \alpha(s) = e^{K(s)}\alpha(0) + \int_0^s e^{K(s;t)}\beta(t) dt

Read the rest of this entry »

Decay of waves IIa: Minkowski background, homogeneous case

Now let us get into the mathematics. The wave equations that we will consider take the form

Equation 1
-\partial_t^2 \phi + \triangle \phi = F

where \phi:\mathbb{R}^{1+n}\to\mathbb{R} is a real valued function defined on (1+n)-dimensional Minkowski space that describes our solution, and F represents a “source” term. When F vanishes identically, we say that we are looking at the linear, homogeneous wave equation. When F is itself a function of \phi and its first derivatives, we say that the equation is a semilinear wave equation.

We first start with the homogeneous, linear case.

Homogeneous wave equation in one spatial dimension

One interesting aspect of the wave equation is that it only possesses the second, multidimensional, dispersive mechanism as described in my previous post. In physical parlance, the “phase velocity” and the “group velocity” of the wave equation are the same. And therefore, a solution of the wave equation, quite unlike a solution of the Schroedinger equation, will not exhibit decay when there is only one spatial dimension (mathematically this is one significant difference between relativistic and quantum mechanics). In this section we make a computation to demonstrate this, a fact that would also be useful later on when we look at higher (in particular, three) dimensions.

Use x\in\mathbb{R} for the variable representing spatial position. The wave equation can be written as

-\partial_t^2 \phi + \partial_x^2\phi = 0

Now we perform a change of variables: let u = \frac{1}{2}(t-x) and v = \frac{1}{2}(t+x) be the canonical null variables. The change of variable formula replaces

Equation 2
\displaystyle \partial_t \to \frac{\partial u}{\partial t} \partial_u + \frac{\partial v}{\partial t} \partial v = \frac{1}{2}\partial_u + \frac{1}{2}\partial_v
\displaystyle \partial_x \to \frac{\partial u}{\partial x} \partial_u + \frac{\partial v}{\partial x} \partial v = -\frac{1}{2}\partial_u + \frac{1}{2}\partial_v

and we get that in the (u,v) coordinate system,

Equation 3
-\partial_u \partial_v \phi = 0

Read the rest of this entry »

Minimal blow-up solution to an inhomogeneous NLS

Yesterday I went to a wonderful talk by Jeremie Szeftel on his recent joint work with Pierre Raphaël. The starting point is the following equation:

Eq 1. Homogeneous NLS
i \partial_t u + \triangle u + u|u|^2 = 0 on [0,t) \times \mathbb{R}^2

It is known as the mass-critical nonlinear Schrödinger equation. One of its very interesting properties is that it admits a soliton solution Q, which is the unique positive (real) radial solution to

Eq 2. Soliton equation
\triangle Q - Q + Q^3 = 0

Plugging Q into the homogeneous NLS, we see that it evolves purely by phase-rotation: it represents a non-dispersing standing wave. Physically, this represents the case when the self-interaction attractive non-linearity exactly balances out the tendency for a wave to disperse.

As one can easily see from its form, the homogeneous NLS has a large class of continuous symmetries:

  • Time translation
  • Spatial translation
  • Phase translation (translation in Fourier space)
  • Dilation
  • Galilean boosts

(It is also symmetric under rotations, but as the spatial rotation group is compact, it cannot cause problems for the analysis [a lesson from concentration compactness; I’ll write about this another time], so we’ll just forget about it for the time being.) The NLS also admits the so-called pseudo-conformal transformation, which is a discrete \mathbb{Z}_2 action that replacing

Eq 3. Pseudo-conformal inversion
\displaystyle u(t,x) \longrightarrow \frac{1}{|t|}\bar{u}(\frac{1}{t},\frac{x}{t}) e^{i x^2 / (4t)}

maps a solution to another solution. A particularly interesting phenomenon related to this additional symmetry is the existence of the minimal mass blow-up solution: by acting on Q (the soliton) with the pseudo-conformal transform, we obtain a solution that blows-up in finite time. But why do we call this a “minimal mass” solution? This is because previously it has been shown by Michael Weinstein (I think) that for any initial data to the NLS with initial mass (L^2 norm) smaller than that of Q, the solution must exists for all time, whereas for any values of mass strictly above that of Q, one can find a (in fact, multiple) solution that blows-up in finite time. With concentration compactness methods, Frank Merle was able to show that the pseudo-conformally inverted Q is the only initial data that leads to finite-time blow-up with that fixed mass.

In some sense, however, the homogeneous NLS is too-nice of a equation: because of its astounding number of symmetries, one can write down an explicit, self-similar blow-up solution just via the pseudo-conformal transform. A natural question to ask is that whether the property of the existence/uniqueness of a minimal mass blow-up solution can exist for more generic looking equations. The toy model one is led to consider is

Eq 4. Inhomogeneous NLS
i\partial_tu + \triangle u + k(x) u|u|^2 = 0

for which the k(x) = 1 case reduces to the homogeneous equation. The addition of the arbitrary term kills all of the symmetries except phase translation and time translation. The former is a trivial set of symmetries (whose orbit is compact, so not posing any difficulty), while the latter is important since it generates the conservation of energy for this equation.

In the case where k(x) is a differentiable, bounded function, some facts about this equation are known through the work of Merle. Without loss of generality, we will assume from now on that k(x) \leq 1 (we can always arrange for this by rescaling the equation). It was found that in this case, if the initial mass of the data is smaller than that of Q, again, we have global existence of a solution. Heuristically, the idea is that k(x) measures the self-interaction strength of the particle, which can vary with its spatial position: the larger the value of k, the more strongly the interaction. Now, in the homogeneous case the low-mass initial data does not have enough matter to lead to a strong enough self-interaction, so the dispersive behavior dominates and there cannot be concentration of energy and blow-up. Heuristically we expect that for interactions strictly weaker than the homogeneous case (k \leq 1), the dispersion should still dominate over the attractive self-force.

Furthermore, Merle also found that a minimal mass blow-up to the inhomogeneous NLS can only occur if k(x) = 1 (hits an interior maximum) at some finite point, and that k(x) is bounded strictly away from 1 outside some large compact set. In this case, the blow-up can only occur in such a way that leads to a concentration of energy at the maximum point. Heuristically, again, this is natural: the strong self-interaction gives a lower potential energy. So it is natural to expect the particle to slide down into this potential well when it concentrates. If the potential asymptotes to the minimum at infinity, however, one may expect the wave to slide out to infinity and disperse, so it is important to have a strict maximum of the interaction strength in the interior.

Szeftel and Raphaël’s work show that such a blow-up solution indeed exists, and is in fact unique.

Around the local maximum of k(x), we can (heuristically) expand by Taylor polynomials. That x_0 is a local maximum implies that we have schematically

k(x) = 1 + c_2\nabla^2k(x_0) x^2 + c_3\nabla^3k(x_0)x^3 + \ldots

In the case where the Hessian term vanishes, by “zooming in” along a pre-supposed self-similar blow-up with rates identical to the one induced by the pseudo-conformal transform in the homogeneous case, we can convince ourselves that the more we zoom in, the flatter k(x) looks. In this case, then it is not too unreasonable that the focusing behavior of the homogeneous case carries over: by zooming in sufficiently we rapidly approach a situation which is locally identical to the homogeneous case. If the energy is already concentrating, then the errors introduced at “large distances” will be small and controllable. This suggest that the problem admits a purely perturbative treatment. This, indeed, was the case, as Banica, Carles, and Duyckaerts have shown.

On the other hand, of the Hessian term does not vanish, one sees that it remains scale-invariant down to the smallest scales. In other words, no matter how far we zoom in, the pinnacle at k(x_0) will always look curved. In this situation, a perturbative method is less suitable, and this is the regime where Szeftel and Raphaël works.

The trick, it seems to me, is the following (I don’t think I completely understand all the intricacies of the proof; here I’ll just talk about the impression I got from the talk and from looking a bit at the paper): it turns out that by inverting the pseudo-conformal transform, we can reformulate the blow-up equation as a large-time equation in some rescaled variables, where now the potential k depends on the scaling parameter which also depends on time. The idea is to “solve backwards from infinity”. If we just plug-in naïvely the stationary solution Q at infinity, there will be error terms when we evolve back. What we want to do is capture the error terms. If we directly linearize the equation around Q, we will pick-up negative-eigenmodes, which will lead to exponential blow-up and destroy our ansatz. To overcome this difficulty, as is standard, the authors applied modulation theory. The idea behind modulation theory is that all the bad eigenmodes for the linearized equation of a good Hamiltonian system should be captured by the natural symmetries. In this case, we don’t have any natural symmetries to use. But we have “almost” symmetries coming from the homogeneous system. So we consider the manifold of functions spanned by symmetry transformations of Q, and decompose the solution as a projection part u which lives on the manifold, and an orthogonal part u'. In this way, all the wild, uncontrolled directions of the flow are captured in some sort of motion on the symmetry manifold. We don’t actually particularly care how the flow happens, as the flow on the manifold preserves norms. The only bit we care about the flow is how it converges as time approaches the blow-up time: this is what gives us the blow-up rate of the equation.

As it turns out, this decomposition is a very good one: the analysis showed that the flow on the manifold is a good approximation (to the fourth order) of the actual physical flow. This means that the orthogonal error u' is going to be rather small and controllable. Of course, to establish these estimates is a lot of hard work; fundamentally, however, the idea is a beautiful one.

The “Hoop Conjecture” of Kip Thorne and Spherically Symmetric Space-times

Abstract. (This being a rather long post, I feel the need to write one.) In the post I first gather some miscellaneous thoughts on what the hoop conjecture is and why it is difficult to prove in general. After this motivation, I show also how the statement becomes much easier to state and prove in spherical symmetry: the entire argument collapses to an exercise in ordinary differential equations. In particular, I demonstrate a theorem that is analogous, yet slightly different, from a recent result of Markus Khuri, using much simpler machinery.

The Hoop conjecture is a proposed criterion for when a black-hole will form under gravitational collapse. Kip Thorne, in 1972 [see Thorne, Nonspherical Gravitational Collapse: a Short Review in Magic without Magic] made the conjecture that (I paraphrase here)

Horizons form when and only when a mass M gets compacted into a region whose circumference C in EVERY direction is bounded by C \lesssim M.

This conjecture, now widely under the name of “Hoop conjecture”, is deliberately vague. (This seemed to have been the trend in physics, especially in general relativity. Conjectures are often stated in such a way that half the effort spent in proving said conjectures are used to find the correct formulation of the statement itself.) Read the rest of this entry »