Uniqueness of the extremal Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetime

TL;DR

This paper proves the uniqueness of extremal Schwarzschild de Sitter and Nariai solutions as the only analytic vacuum spacetimes with static extremal horizons and maximally symmetric cross-sections, extending to higher dimensions.

Contribution

It establishes a uniqueness theorem for extremal Schwarzschild de Sitter spacetimes in higher dimensions and analyzes the anti-de Sitter case via spectral problems.

Findings

Extremal Schwarzschild de Sitter and Nariai are the only such solutions in four and higher dimensions.

Uniqueness reduces to a spectral problem on hyperbolic surfaces in the anti-de Sitter case.

The results hold under the assumption of analyticity and certain topological conditions.

Abstract

We prove that any analytic vacuum spacetime with a positive cosmological constant in four and higher dimensions, that contains a static extremal Killing horizon with a maximally symmetric compact cross-section, must be locally isometric to either the extremal Schwarzschild de Sitter solution or its near-horizon geometry (the Nariai solution). In four-dimensions, this implies these solutions are the only analytic vacuum spacetimes that contain a static extremal horizon with compact cross-sections (up to identifications). We also consider the analogous uniqueness problem for the four-dimensional extremal hyperbolic Schwarzschild anti-de Sitter solution and show that it reduces to a spectral problem for the laplacian on compact hyperbolic surfaces, if a cohomological obstruction to the uniqueness of infinitesimal transverse deformations of the horizon is absent.