The Jang equation and the positive mass theorem in the asymptotically hyperbolic setting (Q2046791)

The present work provides a non-spinor proof of the celebrated Positive Mass Theorem (PMT) for 3-manifolds \(M\) equipped with an asymptotically hyperbolic (AH) metric \(g\) and a 2-tensor \(K\) such that \(K - g\) decays to \(0\) at infinity. Such 3-uples \((M,g,K)\) play the role of initial data for the Cauchy problem of General Relativity. It is of interest in this context to focus on initial data which obey the dominant energy condition (DEC), translating as a geometric inequality that involves \(g\) and \(K\). The positive mass conjecture states that, in this setting, a geometric quantity known as the mass is nonnegative and vanishes only for the ''trivial case'' of a hyperboloidal hypersurface embedded in Minkowski spacetime. The author proves the PMT in this setting through the study of the existence and the properties of a graph \(\Sigma \subset M \times \mathbb{R}\) of a suitable function \(f\) defined on \(M\). This function is required to satisfy the Jang equation, so that \(\Sigma\) would inherit geometric properties that are compatible with earlier and proven versions of the PMT. Although such reduction arguments using the Jang equation had successfully been used in a previous work [\textit{R. Schoen} and \textit{S.-T. Yau}, Commun. Math. Phys. 79, 231--260 (1981; Zbl 0494.53028)] in the asymptotically Euclidean setting, the author has to take particular care to study the Jang equation in the AH setting, especially the asymptotic properties of their solutions and their associated graphs \(\Sigma\). This necessity comes from the higher complexity of the structure at infinity of AH manifolds, and the detailed analysis carried out here may apply to other significant geometric questions in an AH background.