Cohomology with causally restricted supports

Abstract

De Rham cohomology with spacelike compact and timelike compact supports has recently been noticed to be of importance for understanding the structure of classical and quantum Maxwell theory on curved spacetimes. Similarly causally restricted cohomologies of different differential complexes play a similar role in other gauge theories. We introduce a method for computing these causally restricted cohomologies in terms of cohomologies with either compact or unrestricted supports. The calculation exploits the fact that the de Rham-d'Alembert wave operator can be extended to a chain map that is homotopic to zero and that its causal Green function fits into a convenient exact sequence. As a first application, we use the method on the de Rham complex, then also on the Calabi (or Killing-Riemann-Bianchi) complex, which appears in linearized gravity on constant curvature backgrounds. We also discuss applications to other complexes, as well as generalized causal structures and functoriality.