Applications of the Hawking energy on lightcones in cosmology

Abstract

Abstract The past lightcone of an observer in a cosmological spacetime is the unique geometric structure directly linked to observations. After general properties of the Hawking energy along slices of the past lightcone have previously been studied, the present work continues along this path by providing explicit cosmological applications of the Hawking energy associated with a lightcone. Firstly, it is shown that amongst all two-dimensional non-trapped spheres with equal area and average matter density, a shear-free matter distribution maximizes the Hawking energy for sufficiently high densities. Secondly, a Robertson–Walker reference slice is constructed for every lightcone slice based on area and energy. Thirdly, after a few pedagogical examples in concrete FLRW spacetimes, the implications of monotonicity of the energy down the lightcone are explored, arriving at two new bounds on the cosmic fluid’s density and equation-of-state parameter.