A positive quasilocal mass for causal variational principles (Q7019629)

This paper achieves remarkable progress in causal variational principles: Proving a new inequality for a nonlinear surface layer integral and using it to get a fresh proof of the positive mass theorem with volume constraint. Introducing the concept of asymptotic alignment to prove the positive mass theorem without volume constraint broadens the theory's scope. Moreover, a positive quasilocal mass and a synthetic definition of scalar curvature are introduced in the setting of causal variational principles. The notions and results are illustrated by the explicit examples of causal fermion systems constructed in ultrastatic spacetimes and the Schwarzschild spacetime. In these examples, the correspondence to the ADM mass and similarities to the Brown-York mass are worked out.