Geometry of asymptotically flat graphical hypersurfaces in Euclidean space

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Lan-Hsuan Huang, University of Connecticut
Rutgers - Hill Center, Room 705

We consider a special class of asymptotically flat manifolds of nonnegative scalar curvature that can be isometrically embedded in Euclidean space as graphical hypersurfaces. In this setting, the scalar curvature equation becomes a fully nonlinear equation with a divergence structure, and we prove that the graph must be weakly mean convex. The arguments use some intriguing relation between the scalar curvature and mean curvature of the graph and the mean curvature of its level sets. Those observations enable one to give a direct proof of the positive mass theorem in this setting in all dimensions, as well as the stability statement that if the ADM masses of a sequence of such graphs approach zero, then the sequence converges to a flat plane in both Federer-Flemings flat topology and Sormani-Wenger's intrinsic flat topology.