Intuitively, a Cauchy surface is a plane in space-time which is like an instant of time; its significance is that giving the initial conditions on this plane determines the future (and the past) uniquely.
More precisely, a Cauchy surface is any subset of space-time which is intersected by every non-spacelike, inextensible curve, i.e. any causal curve, exactly once.
A partial Cauchy surface is a hypersurface which is intersected by any causal curve at most once.
The name is for Augustin Louis Cauchy.
Read more about Cauchy Surface: Discussion, Cauchy Horizon
Famous quotes containing the word surface:
“Night City was like a deranged experiment in Social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market; either way, you were gone ... though heart or lungs or kidneys might survive in the service of some stranger with New Yen for the clinic tanks.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)