Cones and causal structures on topological and differentiable manifolds (Q4498505)

In classical general relativity, the Lorentzian metric on the space-time determines a causal structure. The goal of this paper is to define causal structures on arbitrary topological or differentiable manifolds without assuming a priori the existence of any Lorentzian metric. The basic idea is to define local cone structures on either topological (or differentiable) manifolds via a continuous (or differentiable) family of pointwise homeomorphisms from the standard null cone variety in \(\mathbb{R}^n \) into the manifold. This defines a local weak cone structure, and a strong local cone structure is similarly defined using a manifold thickening of the cone in \(\mathbb{R}^n \). Using these definitions, the author then is able to define cone causality on such manifolds which leads to reasonable definitions of the causal complement of a set, timelike and spacelike curves, and the usual causality conditions from Lorentzian geometry, such as globally hyperbolic, strongly causal, etc. However, this reviewer notes that the definition of globally hyperbolic given in this paper does not require strong causality, contrary to the usual convention. A discussion is included of the possible implications of these ideas in developing a theory of quantum gravity. It is intended that the notions developed in this paper might provide an alternative to the poset approach [\textit{L. Bombelli, J. Lee, D. Meyer}, and \textit{R. D. Sockin}, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 481-501 (1987)] for defining causality in quantum theories. Finally, we note that the formulation of the condition of a Lorentzian metric being compatible with a local cone structure stated in the article under review contained errors that were corrected in ibid. 41, No. 5, 3303 (2000).