Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1486–1489 (1993)

Topological censorship

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John L. Friedman
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California–Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, California 93106
Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201

Kristin Schleich and Donald M. Witt
Department of Physics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6T 1Z1

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Received 21 May 1993; published in the issue dated 6 September 1993

All three-manifolds are known to occur as Cauchy surfaces of asymptotically flat vacuum spacetimes and of spacetimes with positive-energy sources. We prove here the conjecture that general relativity does not allow an observer to probe the topology of spacetime: Any topological structure collapses too quickly to allow light to traverse it. More precisely, in a globally hyperbolic, asymptotically flat spacetime satisfying the null energy condition, every causal curve from scrI^- to scrI⁺ is homotopic to a topologically trivial curve from scrI^- to scrI⁺.

URL:

http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.1486

DOI:

10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.1486

PACS:

04.20.Cv

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1486–1489 (1993)

Topological censorship

See Also