There have been many attempts to define the notion of quasilocal mass for a spacelike two surface in spacetime by the Hamilton-Jacobi analysis. The essential difficulty in this approach is to identify the right choice of the background configuration to be subtracted from the physical Hamiltonian. Quasilocal mass should be non-negative for surfaces in general spacetime and zero for surfaces in flat spacetime. In this Letter, we propose a new definition of gauge-independent quasilocal mass and prove that it has the desired properties.

The definition of quasi-local mass for a bounded space-like region Ω in space-time is essential in several major unsettled problems in general relativity. The quasi-local mass is expected to be a type of flux integral on the boundary two-surface Σ = ∂Ω and should be independent of whichever space-like region Σ bounds. An important idea which is related to the Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity is to consider a reference surface in a flat ambient space with the same first fundamental form and derive the quasi-local mass from the difference of the extrinsic geometries. This approach has be taken by Brown-York [4][5] and Liu-Yau [16][17] (see also related works [12], [15], [6], [14], [3], [9], [28], [32]) to define such notions using the isometric embedding theorem into the Euclidean three space. However, there exist surfaces in the Minkowski space whose quasilocal mass is strictly positive [19]. It appears that the momentum information needs to accounted for to reconcile the difference. In order to fully capture this information, we use isometric embeddings into the Minkowski space as references. In this article, we first prove an existence and uniqueness theorem for such isometric embeddings. We then solve the boundary value problem for Jang's [13] equation as a procedure to recognize such a surface in the Minkowski space. In doing so, we discover new expression of quasi-local mass for a large class of "admissible" surfaces (see Theorem A and Remark 1.1). The new mass is positive when the ambient space-time satisfies the dominant energy condition and vanishes on surfaces in the Minkowski space. It also has the nice asymptotic behavior at spatial infinity and null infinity. Some of these results were announced in [29].

Abstract. We prove a sharp inequality for hypersurfaces in the ndimensional Anti-deSitter-Schwarzschild manifold for general n ≥ 3. This inequality generalizes the classical Minkowski inequality for surfaces in the three dimensional Euclidean space, and has a natural interpretation in terms of the Penrose inequality for collapsing null shells of dust. The proof relies on a new monotonicity formula for inverse mean curvature flow, and uses a geometric inequality established by the first author in [3].

Let Σ be a compact oriented surface immersed in a four dimensional Kähler-Einstein manifold (M, ω). We consider the evolution of Σ in the direction of its mean curvature vector. It is proved that being symplectic is preserved along the flow and the flow does not develop type I singularity. When M has two parallel Kähler forms ω ′ and ω ′′ that determine different orientations and Σ is symplectic with respect to both ω ′ and ω ′′ , we prove the mean curvature flow of Σ exists smoothly for all time. In the positive curvature case, the flow indeed converges at infinity.

Let f : Σ 1 → Σ 2 be a map between compact Riemannian manifolds of constant curvature. This article considers the evolution of the graph of f in Σ 1 × Σ 2 by the mean curvature flow. Under suitable conditions on the curvature of Σ 1 and Σ 2 and the differential of the initial map, we show that the flow exists smoothly for all time. At each instant t, the flow remains the graph of a map f t and f t converges to a constant map as t approaches infinity. This also provides a regularity estimate for Lipschtz initial data.

In [11,12], Liu and the second author propose a definition of the quasi-local mass and prove its positivity. This is demonstrated through an inequality which in turn can be interpreted as a total mean curvature comparison theorem for isometric embeddings of a surface of positive Gaussian curvature. The Riemannian version corresponds to an earlier theorem of Shi and Tam [18]. In this article, we generalize such an inequality to the case when the Gaussian curvature of the surface is allowed to be negative. This is done by an isometric embedding into the hyperboloid in the Minkowski space and a future-directed time-like quasi-local energy-momentum is obtained.

We define quasi-local conserved quantities in general relativity by using the optimal isometric embedding in [28] to transplant Killing fields in the Minkowski spacetime back to the 2-surface of interest in a physical spacetime. To each optimal isometric embedding, a dual element of the Lie algebra of the Lorentz group is assigned. Quasi-local angular momentum and quasi-local center of mass correspond to pairing this element with rotation Killing fields and boost Killing fields, respectively. They obey classical transformation laws under the action of the Poincaré group. We further justify these definitions by considering their limits as the total angular momentum and the total center of mass of an isolated system. These expressions were derived from the Hamilton-Jacobi analysis of gravitation action and thus satisfy conservation laws. As a result, we obtained an invariant total angular momentum theorem in the Kerr spacetime. For a vacuum asymptotically flat i! nitial data set of order 1, it is shown that the limits are always finite without any extra assumptions. We also study these total conserved quantities on a family of asymptotically flat initial data sets evolving by the vacuum Einstein evolution equation. It is shown that the total angular momentum is conserved under the evolution. For the total center of mass, the classical dynamical formula relating the center of mass, energy, and linear momentum is recovered, in the nonlinear context of initial data sets evolving by the vacuum Einstein evolution equation. The definition of quasi-local angular momentum provides an answer to the second problem in classical general relativity on Penrose's list [20].

We study the limit of quasilocal energy defined in [7] and [8] for a family of spacelike 2-surfaces approaching null infinity of an asymptotically flat spacetime. It is shown that Lorentzian symmetry is recovered and an energymomentum 4-vector is obtained. In particular, the result is consistent with the Bondi-Sachs energy-momentum at a retarded time. The quasilocal mass in [7] and [8] is defined by minimizing quasilocal energy among admissible isometric embeddings and observers. The solvability of the Euler-Lagrange equation for this variational problem is also discussed in both the asymptotically flat and asymptotically null cases. Assuming analyticity, the equation can be solved and the solution is locally minimizing in all orders. In particular, this produces an optimal reference hypersurface in the Minkowski space for the spatial or null exterior region of an asymptotically flat spacetime.