The volume blow-up and characteristic classes for transverse, type-changing, pseudo-Riemannian metrics (Q674787)

The authors consider smooth manifolds equipped with smooth \((0,2)\) tensors which change bilinear type on a hypersurface in a transverse manner. The differential geometry of such singular pseudo-Riemannian metrics has been previously studied extensively in a series of approximately twelve papers by the authors. The present paper continues this work. The authors define natural tensors on the hypersurface of degeneracy which control the smooth extension of sectional, Ricci, and scalar curvatures to the hypersurface. As one consequence, they show that there exist smooth, type-changing conformal structures for which no smooth metric representation has smooth sectional curvature. In the main result of this paper, the characteristic class construction is adapted to a large class of manifolds with singular pseudo-Riemannian metrics. Several applications of this construction are given, including a Gauss-Bonnet formula for compact surfaces with a II-flat, transverse, type-changing metric. Another application appears to give a curvature restriction for a class of physically relevant spacetimes with incompleteness singularities.