Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-nmvwc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-01T03:17:05.524Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Causal structure

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2023

Stephen W. Hawking
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
George F. R. Ellis
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Get access

Summary

§6.1 deals with the question of the orientability of timelike and spacelike bases. In §6.2 basic causal relations are defined and the definition of a non-spacelike curve is extended from piecewise differentiable to continuous. The properties of the boundary of the future of a set are derived in §6.3. In §6.4a number of conditions which rule out violations or near violations of causality are discussed. The closely related concepts of Cauchy developments and global hyperbolicity are introduced in §6.5 and §6.6, and are used in §6.7 to prove the existence of non-spacelike geodesies of maximum length between certain pairs of points.

In §6.8 we describe the construction of Geroch, Kronheimer, and Penrose for attaching a causal boundary to spacetime. A particular example of such a boundary is provided by a class of asymptotically flat spacetimes which are studied in § 6.9

Type
Chapter
Information
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time
50th Anniversary Edition
, pp. 180 - 225
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×