Mass and Riemannian polyhedra (Q2126004)

In this paper the authors establish a link between the concept of the ADM mass in asymptotically flat Riemannian spaces (subject to the positive mass theorem) and Gromov's polyhedron comparison theory. Roughly the authors prove the followings. Let \((M,g)\) be an asymptotically flat Riemannian manifold of dimension \(m\geqq 3\). Then one can find a sequence of Riemannian polyhedra \(\{P_k\}_{k\in{\mathbb N}}\) in the asymptotic region (i.e., outside of a compact subset) of \(M\) such that if its members satisfy certain technical conditions then the magnitude of the ADM mass of \((M,g)\) arises by computing the sum of an \((m-1)\)-dimensional integral involving the mean curvature along the faces of a fixed \(P_k\) and an \((m-2)\)-dimensional integral involving the dihedral angles along the edges of this \(P_k\) from the polyhedron sequence, and then taking the limit \(k\rightarrow+\infty\) along the sequence (for a more precise formulation see Theorem 1.1). As an application of the positive mass theorem one obtains inequalities for the aforementioned polyhedral integrals, too (Theorem 1.2). Finally, if \(m\geqq 4\) then one can find appropriate coordinate hyperplanes in the asymptotic region of \(M\) such that doing computations along the corresponding hyperplanar polyhedra \(\{P_k\}_{k\in{\mathbb N}}\) the computation of the ADM mass is precise in the limit \(k\rightarrow+\infty\) (see Theorem 1.3 and Section 4 for a more precise formulation).