The maximal analytic Schwarzschild spacetime is manifestly inextendible as a Lorentzian manifold with a twice continuously differentiable metric. In this paper, we prove the stronger statement that it is even inextendible as a Lorentzian manifold with a continuous metric. To capture the obstruction to continuous extensions through the curvature singularity, we introduce the notion of the spacelike diameter of a globally hyperbolic region of a Lorentzian manifold with a merely continuous metric and give a sufficient condition for the spacelike diameter to be finite. The investigation of low-regularity inextendibility criteria is motivated by the strong cosmic censorship conjecture.

It is known that using the Gaussian beam approximation one can show that there exist solutions of the wave equation on a general globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold whose energy is localised along a given null geodesic for a finite, but arbitrarily long time. In this paper, we show that the energy of such a localised solution is determined by the energy of the underlying null geodesic. This result opens the door to various applications of Gaussian beams on Lorentzian manifolds that do not admit a globally timelike Killing vector field. In particular we show that trapping in the exterior of Kerr or at the horizon of an extremal Reissner-Nordström black hole necessarily leads to a 'loss of derivative' in a local energy decay statement. We also demonstrate the obstruction formed by the red-shift effect at the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole to scattering constructions from the future (where the red-shift turns into a blue-shift): we construct solutions to the backwards problem whose energies grow exponentially for a finite, but arbitrarily long time. Finally, we give a simple mathematical realisation of the heuristics for the blue-shift effect near the Cauchy horizon of sub-extremal and extremal black holes: we construct a sequence of solutions to the wave equation whose initial energies are uniformly bounded, whereas the energy near the Cauchy horizon goes to infinity.

We prove that a large class of smooth solutions ψ to the linear wave equation g ψ = 0 on subextremal rotating Kerr spacetimes which are regular and decaying along the event horizon become singular at the Cauchy horizon. More precisely, we show that assuming appropriate upper and lower bounds on the energy along the event horizon, the solution has infinite (non-degenerate) energy on any spacelike hypersurfaces intersecting the Cauchy horizon transversally. Extrapolating from known results in the Reissner-Nordström case, the assumed upper and lower bounds required for our theorem are conjectured to hold for solutions arising from generic smooth and compactly supported initial data on a Cauchy hypersurface. This result is motivated by the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in general relativity.

Abstract:The study of low regularity (in-)extendibility of Lorentzian manifolds is motivated by the question whether a given solution to the Einstein equations can be extended (or is maximal) as a weak solution. In this paper we show that a timelike complete and globally hyperbolic Lorentzian manifold is C 0 -inextendible. For the proof we make use of the result, recently established by Sämann (Ann Henri Poincaré 17(6): 2016), that even for continuous Lorentzian manifolds that are globally hyperbolic, there exists a length-maximizing causal curve between any two causally related points.

In 1969, Choquet-Bruhat and Geroch established the existence of a unique maximal globally hyperbolic Cauchy development of given initial data for the Einstein equations. Their proof, however, has the unsatisfactory feature that it relies crucially on the axiom of choice in the form of Zorn's lemma. In this paper we present a proof that avoids the use of Zorn's lemma. In particular, we provide an explicit construction of this maximal globally hyperbolic development.