Concavity of spacetimes

Motivated by recent breathtaking progress in the synthetic study of Lorentzian geometry, we investigate the local concavity of time separation functions on Finsler spacetimes as a Lorentzian counterpart to Busemann’s convexity in metric geometry. We show that a Berwald spacetime is locally concave if and only if its flag curvature is nonnegative in timelike directions. We also give another characterization of nonnegative flag curvature by the convexity of future (or past) capsules, inspired by Kristály–Kozma’s result in the positive definite case. These characterizations are new even for Lorentzian manifolds.

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Publication Details

Journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A Mathematics
Published
2026-02-18
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/prm.2026.10133
Primary Topic
Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Concavity of spacetimes

Felix Rott, Shin‐ichi Ohta, Tobias Beran, Darius Erös
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A Mathematics
Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
article

Concavity of spacetimes

Felix Rott, Shin‐ichi Ohta, Tobias Beran, Darius Erös
article en

Abstract

Motivated by recent breathtaking progress in the synthetic study of Lorentzian geometry, we investigate the local concavity of time separation functions on Finsler spacetimes as a Lorentzian counterpart to Busemann’s convexity in metric geometry. We show that a Berwald spacetime is locally concave if and only if its flag curvature is nonnegative in timelike directions. We also give another characterization of nonnegative flag curvature by the convexity of future (or past) capsules, inspired by Kristály–Kozma’s result in the positive definite case. These characterizations are new even for Lorentzian manifolds.

Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A Mathematics
University of Vienna (AT), Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (IT), RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project (JP)
European Commission, Austrian Science Fund, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
Openalex Percentile: Top 99%
Cosmology and Gravitation Theories
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Concavity of spacetimes — Felix Rott, Shin‐ichi Ohta, et al. · Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A Mathematics (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS