Author: Alexander Engel

Non-linear wave equations (in 3+1 dimensions) are ubiquitous in physics, playing a vital role in many subfields of it. There are many methods available to show short-time existence of solutions for such equations, but global-in-time existence is a much more subtle problem. In the 1980s Klainermann introduced a so-called null condition on the nonlinearities of … Continue reading "Global existence for non-linear wave equations"

Recall that the Whitehead manifold is a contractible 3-manifold which is not homeomorphic to Euclidean 3-space (Wikipedia entry). It was proven by Chang-Weinberger-Yu (link) that the Whitehead manifold can not admit a complete metric of uniformly positive scalar curvature. Last year their result was strengthened by Jian Wang in arXiv:1805.03544 to the statement that the Whitehead manifold can … Continue reading "The Whitehead manifold and positive scalar curvature"

Let \((X,d)\) be a complete, geodesic metric space. \((X,d)\) is called an Alexandrov space of global non-positive curvature if for every quadruple of points \(x,y,z,w\) such that \(w\) is a metric midpoint of \(x\) and \(y\), i.e., \(d(w,x) = d(w,y) = d(x,y)/2\), we have \[d(z,w)^2 + d(x,y)^2/4 \le d(z,x)^2/2 + d(z,y)^2/2.\] If the reverse inequality … Continue reading "Coarse embeddings and non-positive curvature"

In a recent preprint ( arXiv:1811.08519 ) E. Barbosa and F. Conrado derive for manifolds with boundary topological obstructions to the existence of non-negative scalar curvature metrics with mean convex boundaries. The boundary of a Riemannian manifold is said to be mean convex, if the mean curvature of it with respect to the outward unit … Continue reading "Non-negative scalar curvature and mean convex boundaries"