Spacetime distances: an exploration

What is the distance between two points in spacetime? This is a basic geometric question, which so far has no single, definitive answer. Unlike their Riemannian cousins, Lorentzian manifolds are not known to carry a canonical distance function. There is, however, a well-known way to `Riemannianize' a Lorentzian metric tensor, under suitable conditions, (e.g., `Wick rotation'). In a fairly different vein, a new `null distance function' was also introduced in [18]. Our goal here is to begin an exploration of the broad question of distance functions on spacetimes in general, including a concrete comparison of the aforementioned constructions. We devote special attention to the model `generalized Robertson-Walker' (GRW) setting, and also study how the `classical FLRW big bangs' manifest in terms of such distance functions, and associated metric completions.

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