Penrose-type inequalities with a Euclidean background (Q1630071)

The author establishes a Penrose-like inequality for conformally flat manifolds in arbitrary dimension which is sharper than the traditional inequality when many minimal surfaces are present. The conformally flat structure is exploited in an essential fashion to bound the ADM mass from below in terms of the Euclidean area of an area-outer-minimizing surface. An example with five or more black holes is presented in which this inequality gives a better estimate for the ADM mass than the RPI. The author establishes a result where zero-area singularities replace minimal surfaces. The author also studies metrics conformal to a scalar-flat background and proves a Penrose-type inequailty without assumptions on the sign of the scalar curvature. Finally, a new lower bound for the ADM mass of a conformally flat asymptotic manifold is derived where there are any number of zero area singularities present.