Extrinsic black hole uniqueness in pure Lovelock gravity (Q2160322)

The authors state and prove a rigidity result for black holes in Lovelock gravity. More specifically, after a review of the Lovelock vacuum equations and after a study of various features of the Lovelock-Schwarzschild black hole solutions thereof, they introduce the notion of \textit{extrinsic black hole in Lovelock gravity}: these are Riemannian manifolds \((M,g)\) with a compact boundary \(\Gamma\) (the \textit{horizon}) and one asymptotically flat end \(\mathcal{E}\), isometrically embedded as a spacelike hypersurface in the half-space \(\{x_{n+1} \geq 0\}\) of Minkowski spacetime, such that \(M\) intersects orthogonally the hyperplane \(\{x_{n+1} = 0\}\) along \(\Gamma\), and such that a constraint equation defined by a high-order mean curvature is satisfied (this condition is reminiscent of the constraint equations for time-symmetric initial data in Einstein's gravity). With some additionnal assumptions (an ellipticity condition on another higher mean curvature operator and a rather precise asymptotic behaviour of the metric on \(\mathcal{E}\)), the authors are able to prove that such an extrinsic black hole is isometric to a Lovelock-Schwarzschild black hole of mass parameter \(m > 0\). Their argument relies on a similar result in [\textit{H. Araújo} and \textit{M. L. Leite}, Indiana Univ. Math. J. 61, No. 4, 1667--1693 (2012; Zbl 1275.53053)] for complete hypersurfaces with two ``regular'' ends satisfying the same higher mean curvature conditions. In particular, one of these conditions (the ellipticity condition) leads to a regularity result for the smoothness of the doubling of \(M\) across the horizon \(\Gamma\). Finally, the authors obtain a Penrose-like inequality for graphs in this context: the inequality relates the \(k\)-th order Gauss-Bonnet-Chern mass \(m_k(g)\) with the \((n-1)\)-Haussdorff measure of the horizon \(\Gamma\). The rigidity part of the inequality is also proved for sufficiently small perturbations of a Lovelock-Schwarzschild black holes.