Quantum fields on semi-globally hyperbolic space-times

Abstract

We introduce a class of space-times modeling singular events such as evaporating black holes and topology changes, which we dub as semi-globally hyperbolic space-times. On these space-times we aim to study the existence of reasonable quantum field theories. We establish a notion of linear scalar quantum field theories on these space-times, show how such a theory might be constructed and introduce notions of global dynamics on these theories. Applying these constructions to both black hole evaporation and topology changing space-times, we find that existence of algebras can be relatively easily established, while the existence of reasonable states on these algebras remains an unsolved problem.