Concavity of spacetimes

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Authors: Tobias Beran, Darius Erös, Shin‐ichi Ohta, Felix Rott
Cited by: 0
References: 33

Abstract

Motivated by recent breathtaking progress in the synthetic study of Lorentzian geometry, we investigate the local concavity of time separation functions on Finsler spacetimes as a Lorentzian counterpart to Busemann’s convexity in metric geometry. We show that a Berwald spacetime is locally concave if and only if its flag curvature is nonnegative in timelike directions. We also give another characterization of nonnegative flag curvature by the convexity of future (or past) capsules, inspired by Kristály–Kozma’s result in the positive definite case. These characterizations are new even for Lorentzian manifolds.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Cosmology and Gravitation Theories Relativity and Gravitational Theory Advanced Mathematical Theories and Applications

Publication details

Journal / source
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A Mathematics
Pages
1–22
Publication date
18 February 2026
Language
EN