Inhomogeneous cosmological models with homogeneous inner hypersurface geometry (Q1909335)

The authors consider generalized homogeneous cosmological models, that is, spacetimes possessing a slicing into homogeneous spacelike hypersurfaces. This family of hypersurfaces may be contemplated as describing a continuous curve in a certain topological space: the space of 3-dimensional homogeneous Riemannian manifolds (locally isometric manifolds are considered as identical). Besides the exceptional case of Kantowski-Sachs models, all other 3-dimensional homogeneous spaces can be obtained by considering left-invariant Riemannian metrics on 3-dimensional Lie groups; thus, a Bianchi type is associated to each such manifold. The authors ask themselves in what way can the corresponding Bianchi type change with time? In general, they consider continuous one-parameter families \((\Sigma,g_\lambda)\), \(\lambda \in [0,1]\), where \(\Sigma\) is an orientable 3-dimensional manifold and \(g_\lambda\) a homogeneous Riemannian metric on \(\Sigma\). Several topological properties related with the Bianchi type are then studied. Thus, five natural problems are stated and their reciprocal implications are discussed. For instance, the last one says: fix \((\Sigma,g)\) of Bianchi type \(X\) and \((\Sigma,g')\) of Bianchi type \(Y\), does then exist \((\Sigma,g_\lambda)\) such that \(g_0=g\), \(g_1=g'\) and \((\Sigma,g_\lambda)\) is of Bianchi type \(Y\) for \(0<\lambda\leq 1\)? Among others, this problem is resolved along the paper. In order to study the space of 3-dimensional homogeneous Riemannian manifolds, four scalar Riemannian invariants are associated to each of these homogeneous manifolds. These four numbers determine the geometry of the homogeneous space. From the possible eigenvalues for the Ricci tensor (after rescaling the metric in the non-flat case) the authors obtain several algebraic equations involving two of these invariants, the scalar curvature \(\widehat{R}\) and \(\widehat{S}\), given by \(\widehat{S} = \widehat{S}^i_j \widehat{S}^j_k\widehat{S}^k_i\) where \(\widehat{S}^i_j\) is the trace-free part of the Ricci tensor. Thus, certain areas in the \(\widehat{R}\)-\(\widehat{S}\)-plane are drawn representing all the algebraically possible values for \(\widehat{R}\), \(\widehat{S}\). It is then explained which points really represent a homogeneous space. The paper ends with a detailed discussion which includes, in particular, some comments about the study of analogous problems in global geometry.