A variational theory for light rays in stably causal Lorentzian manifolds: regularity and multiplicity results (Q1366999)

The authors consider stably causal manifolds with a fixed future and past endless timelike curve \(\gamma\). They let \(\Lambda\) be a neighbourhood of \(\gamma\) which has smooth, timelike boundary and the property that no lightlike geodesics with both endpoints in \(\Lambda\) leave this set. They use a time function to construct a Riemannian metric which they use in the standard way to define a Sobolev space of absolutely continuous curves \(z:[0,1]\to\Lambda\). This structure does not depend on the chosen time function. This infinite-dimensional space contains a submanifold \(\Omega^{1,2}_{p,\gamma}\) consisting of those curves which start in \(p\) and end in \(\gamma\). The main object of interest is now \({\mathfrak L}^+_{p, \gamma} \subset \Omega^{1,2}_{p, \gamma}\) which consists of future-directed lightlike geodesics which connect \(p\) with \(\gamma\). They study the functional \(Q(z)=\int^1_0(dT (\dot z))^2ds\) and related functionals which penalize if the curve \(z\) comes close to \(\partial \Lambda\). The main part of the paper is devoted to avoid a technical problem is this approach. The space \(\Omega^{1,2}_{p, \gamma}\) fails to be smooth at \({\mathfrak L}^+_{p, \gamma}\). In order to get around this problem they approximate \({\mathfrak L}^+_{p,\gamma}\) with \({\mathcal L}_{p, \gamma}^{+,\varepsilon}\), where the curves in \({\mathfrak L}^{+, \varepsilon}_{p,\gamma}\) have tangent vectors of length \(-\varepsilon^2\) almost everywhere. Using this technique the authors succeed in developing a Lyusternik-Schnirelman theory of light rays and in obtaining multiplicity results with respect to \(\gamma\).