Uniqueness of complete maximal hypersurfaces in spatially parabolic generalized Robertson–Walker spacetimes

Abstract

A new technique for the study of noncompact complete spacelike hypersurfaces in generalized Robertson–Walker (GRW) spacetimes whose fiber is a parabolic Riemannian manifold is introduced. This class of spacetimes allows us to model open universes which extend to spacelike closed GRW spacetimes from the viewpoint of the geometric analysis of the fiber, and which, unlike those spacetimes, could be compatible with the holographic principle. First, under reasonable assumptions on the restriction of the warping function to the spacelike hypersurface and on the hyperbolic angle between the unit normal vector field and a certain timelike vector field, a complete spacelike hypersurface in a spatially parabolic GRW spacetime is shown to be parabolic, and the existence of a simply connected parabolic spacelike hypersurface in a GRW spacetime also leads to the parabolicity of its fiber. Then, all the complete maximal hypersurfaces in spatially parabolic GRW spacetimes are determined in several cases, extending, in particular, to this family of open cosmological models several well-known uniqueness results for the case of spatially closed GRW spacetimes. Moreover, new Calabi–Bernstein problems are solved.