We show that the homogeneous, massless Einstein-Vlasov system with toroidal spatial topology and diagonal Bianchi type I symmetry for initial data close to isotropic data isotropizes towards the future and in particular asymptotes to a radiative Einstein-deSitter model. We use an energy method to obtain quantitative estimates on the rate of isotropization in this class of models.

We present results supporting the Horowitz-Myers conjecture, that the Horowitz-Myers metrics minimise energy in the relevant classes of metrics.

Generalising a proof by Bartnik in the asymptotically Euclidean case, we give an elementary proof of positivity of the hyperbolic mass near the hyperbolic space.It is a pleasure to dedicate this work to Robert Bartnik on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

It is shown that the generalized Collins–Stewart radiation and Milne solutions are attractors of the massless Einstein–Vlasov system for Bianchi types II and V spacetimes, respectively. The proof is based on an energy method and bootstrap argument which are used to determine the decay rates of the perturbations away from the attractors.

We derive expressions for the total Hamiltonian energy of gravitating systems in higher dimensional theories in terms of the Riemann tensor, allowing a cosmological constant $\Lambda \in \mathbb{R}$. Our analysis covers asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes, asymptotically flat spacetimes, as well as Kaluza-Klein asymptotically flat spacetimes. We show that the Komar mass equals the ADM mass in asymptotically flat space-times in all dimensions, generalising the four-dimensional result of Beig, and that this is not true anymore with Kaluza-Klein asymptotics. We show that the Hamiltonian mass does not necessarily coincide with the ADM mass in Kaluza-Klein asymptotically flat space-times, and that the Witten positivity argument provides a lower bound for the Hamiltonian mass, and not for the ADM mass, in terms of the electric charge. We illustrate our results on the Rasheed Kaluza-Klein vacuum metrics, which we study in some detail, pointing out restrictions that arise from the requirement of regularity, seemingly unnoticed so far in the literature