Prescribing the mean curvature of an achronal hypersurface as a measure: the case of 3D spacetimes

Abstract

We study the existence problem for achronal hypersurfaces $M \hookrightarrow \overline{M}$ in a globally hyperbolic spacetime, whose mean curvature is a prescribed -- possibly singular -- source, and whose boundary is a given smooth spacelike submanifold. Since $M$ is allowed to go null somewhere, the mean curvature prescription is to be understood in the distributional sense. We prove a general existence and regularity theorem for surfaces in ambient dimension $3$. Although most of our estimates hold in any dimension, recent counterexamples show that some of our conclusions fail in ambient dimension at least $5$. The case of $4$D-spacetimes is an open problem. Our theorems have application to Born-Infeld electrostatics in general static spacetimes.