Classification of the orthogonal separable webs for the Hamilton-Jacobi and Klein-Gordon equations on 3-dimensional Minkowski space (Q2120864)

This paper classifies the orthogonal separable webs, up to isometry, for the Hamilton-Jacobi and the Klein-Gordon equations on three-dimensional Minkowski space \(\mathbb{E}^{3}_{1}\). They do so by classifying the possible concircular tensors up to equivalence. They define orthogonal separable webs as follows: an orthogonal web on a Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) is a set of \(n\) mutually transversal and orthogonal foliations of dimension \(n-1\). They say a coordinate system \(\{q^{i}\}\) is adapted to the web if its leaves are locally represented by \(q^{i}=c^{i}\) a constant for some \(i\). A web is said to be separable if the Hamilton-Jacobi equation admits a separable solution in those coordinates. On a manifold of constant curvature, this is equivalent to the Klein-Gordon equation admitting a separable solution. The Hamilton-Jacobi and Klein-Gordon equations are respectively \[ \frac{1}{2}g^{ij}(q) \frac{\partial W}{\partial q^{i}}\frac{\partial W}{\partial q^{j}} = E \, , \qquad \frac{1}{\sqrt{|\det g|}}\frac{\partial}{\partial q^{i}} \left( \sqrt{|\det g|} g^{ij}\frac{\partial \phi}{\partial q^{j}} \right) + m^{2}\phi = 0\,. \] Additive and product separability of these equations, respectively, mean that these equations admit solutions in these coordinates of the form \[ W(q,c) = \sum_{i}W_{i}(q^{i},c) \, , \qquad \phi(q,c) = \prod_{i}\phi_{i}(q^{i},c) \] with some constants \(c\), and satisfying certain completeness relations which they specify. The authors use the fact that all separable orthogonal webs on a background of constant scalar curvature can be obtained from the eigenspaces and eigenfunctions of concircular 2-tensors on that background. A concircular 2-tensor (CT) \(L\), on a Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) is defined to be \[ \nabla_{k}L_{ij} = \alpha_{i}g_{jk} + \alpha_{j}g_{ik} \] The CT is said to be orthogonal if it is pointwise diagonalisable, and it is irreducible if its eigenfunctions are functionally independent. They state that any CT on \(\mathbb{E}^{3}_{1}\) can be written in a canonical form \[ L = A + 2w\odot r + m r\odot r \] where \(A\) is some constant self-adjoint tensor, \(w\) is some vector in \(\mathbb{E}^{3}_{1}\), \(r\) is the dilatation vector field, and \(\odot\) is the symmetric tensor product. They further use the fact that, up to a certain equivalence relation on the \(L\) which they state, there are four distinct classes of \(L\) which they call cartesian, central, non-null axial, and null axial, where the definitions of each depend on the precise values of \(A,w,m\). Their classification then reduces to classifying the possible Jordan-normal forms of the constant tensor \(A\) in each case. More precisely, it reduces to classifying the possible Jordan-normal forms of the tensor which is \(A\) restricted to the orthogonal complement to \(D= \{w,Aw,A^{2}w,...\}\). From this classification of CT's, they are able to find the separable orthogonal webs via the following. If \(L\) is irreducible then the distributions orthogonal to the eigenspaces define the leaves of the foliation, and the eigenfunctions are good coordinates for the web. If the CT is reducible, however, then they find a warped product decomposition of \(\mathbb{E}^{3}_{1}\) which is adapted to \(L\). That is, they find a local decomposition \[ \mathbb{E}^{3}_{1} \simeq N_{0} \times_{\rho_{1}} N_{1} \times_{\rho_{2}} \dots . \] such that each \(T_{p}N_{i}\) is an invariant subspace of \(L\). They then use previous results about the classification of orthogonal separable webs on \(\mathbb{E}^{2}, \mathbb{E}^{2}_{1}, \mathbb{H}^{2}, \mathrm{dS}_{2}\) to find separable webs on each of the \(N_i\) factors, which can then be uplifted to an orthogonal separable web on \(\mathbb{E}^{3}_{1}\). The classification, along with the set of adapted coordinates is given in Section 4. The appendix contains some useful results about self-adjoint operators in backgrounds of indefinite signature.