Collisions of particles in locally AdS spacetimes

Abstract

We investigate 3-dimensional globally hyperbolic AdS manifolds containing "particles", i.e., cone singularities along a graph $\Gamma$. We impose physically relevant conditions on the cone singularities, e.g. positivity of mass (angle less than $2\pi$ on time-like singular segments). We construct examples of such manifolds, describe the cone singularities that can arise and the way they can interact (the local geometry near the vertices of $\Gamma$). The local geometry near an "interaction point" (a vertex of the singular locus) has a simple geometric description in terms of polyhedra in the extension of hyperbolic 3-space by the de Sitter space. We then concentrate on spaces containing only (interacting) massive particles. To each such space we associate a graph and a finite family of pairs of hyperbolic surfaces with cone singularities. We show that this data is sufficient to recover the space locally (i.e., in the neighborhood of a fixed metric). This is a partial extension of a result of Mess for non-singular globally hyperbolic AdS manifolds.