Non-smooth differential geometry of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds: Boundary and geodesic structure of gravitational wave space-times in mathematical relativity

Abstract

This thesis is largely concerned with the changing representations of 'boundary' or 'ideal' points of a pseudo-Riemannian manifold -- and our primary interest is in the space-times of general relativity. In particular, we are interested in the following question: What assumptions about the 'nature' of 'portions' of a certain 'ideal boundary' construction (essentially the 'abstract boundary' of Scott and Szekeres (1994)) allow us to define precisely the topological type of these 'portions', i.e., to show that different representations of this ideal boundary, corresponding to different embeddings of the manifold into others, have corresponding 'portions' that are homeomorphic?