Strong quantum energy inequality and the Hawking singularity theorem

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Eleni Kontou (University of York)

Hawking's singularity theorem concerns matter obeying the strong energy condition (SEC), which means that all observers experience a nonnegative effective energy density (EED), thereby guaranteeing the timelike convergence property. However, for both classical and quantum fields, violations of the SEC can be observed in some of the simplest of cases, like the massive Klein-Gordon field.

Therefore there is a need to develop theorems with weaker restrictions, namely energy conditions averaged over an entire geodesic and quantum inequalities, weighted local averages of energy densities. We have derived lower bounds of the EED in the presence of both classical and quantum scalar fields allowing nonzero mass and nonminimal coupling to the scalar curvature. In the quantum case these bounds take the form of a set of state-dependent quantum energy inequalities valid for the class of Hadamard states.

Finally, we discuss how these lower bounds are applied to prove Hawking-type singularity theorems asserting that, along with sufficient initial contraction at a compact Cauchy surface, the spacetime is future timelike geodesically incomplete. The talk is based on: DOI:10.1007/s10714-018-2446-5, arXiv:1809.05047 and a manuscript in preparation.