Topology Change and the Propagation of Massless Fields

Abstract

We analyse the massless wave equation on a class of two dimensional manifolds consisting of an arbitrary number of topological cylinders connected to one or more topological spheres. Such manifolds are endowed with a degenerate (non-globally hyperbolic) metric. Attention is drawn to the topological constraints on solutions describing monochromatic modes on both compact and non-compact manifolds. Energy and momentum currents are constructed and a new global sum rule discussed. The results offer a rigorous background for the formulation of a field theory of topologically induced particle production.