Bartnik's stationary vacuum conjecture for mass minimizers

Let (Ω,g0,k0)(\Omega, g_0, k_0) be a compact initial data set with nonempty smooth boundary, satisfying the dominant energy condition, and let (M,g,k)(M, g, k) be a Bartnik mass minimizer for (Ω,g0,k0)(\Omega, g_0, k_0). Bartnik's stationary vacuum conjecture. The interior initial data (IntM,g,k)(\operatorname{Int} M, g, k) should embed in a vacuum spacetime admitting a timelike Killing vector field; equivalently, (M,g,k)(M, g, k) should embed in a vacuum and strongly stationary spacetime. The conjecture concerns the expected geometric characterization of Bartnik mass minimizers; it was originally formulated in three dimensions and can naturally be posed in general dimensions. The pp-wave counterexamples discussed by Huang and Lee disprove it for zero Bartnik mass in dimensions n>4n>4.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Sven Hirsch and Lan-Hsuan Huang, “Monotonicity of Causal Killing Vectors and Geometry of ADM Mass Minimizers”, arXiv:2510.10306 (2025).

Additional references

8 papers in this index state this conjecture (2003–2025). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2509.03478, arXiv:2206.00079, arXiv:2206.00082, arXiv:2103.15887, arXiv:2007.00593, arXiv:2007.05452, arXiv:math/0304259.

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