Rigidity and positivity of Hawking quasi-local energy on area-constrained critical surfaces

Abstract

A key test for any quasi-local energy in general relativity is that it be nonnegative and satisfy a rigidity property; if it vanishes, the region enclosed is flat. We show that the Hawking energy, also known as the Hawking mass, satisfies these properties under the dominant energy condition when evaluated on its natural area-constrained critical surfaces within a spacelike hypersurface (initial data set). In the time-symmetric case, these critical surfaces coincide with area-constrained Willmore surfaces, and we obtain positivity and rigidity theorems for the Hawking energy on such surfaces, including charged and cosmological constant (hyperbolic and spherical) variants as well as higher-dimensional analogues. In the fully dynamical (non-time-symmetric) case, we establish the first nonnegativity and rigidity theorems for the Hawking energy in this general setting. These results confirm the Hawking energy's consistency with basic physical principles and address several longstanding ambiguities and criticisms.