# Hubert Bray

• Professor of Mathematics
• Professor in the Department of Physics (Secondary)
External address: 189 Physics Bldg, Durham, NC 27710
Internal office address: Box 90320, Durham, NC 27708-0320
Phone: (919) 757-8428
Office Hours:

Mondays, 4:30 - 6:30 p.m.

### Research Areas and Keywords

##### Geometry: Differential & Algebraic
scalar curvature, minimal surfaces, geometric flows, conformal geometry, isoperimetric surfaces
##### Mathematical Physics
black holes, Einstein curvature, general relativity, quasi-local mass, dark matter, galactic curvature

Professor Bray uses differential geometry to understand general relativity, and general relativity to motivate interesting problems in differential geometry. In 2001, he published his proof of the Riemannian Penrose Conjecture about the mass of black holes using geometric ideas related to minimal surfaces, scalar curvature, conformal geometry, geometric flows, and harmonic functions. He is also interested in the large-scale unexplained curvature of the universe, otherwise known as dark matter, which makes up most of the mass of galaxies. Professor Bray has proposed geometric explanations for dark matter which he calls "wave dark matter," which motivate very interesting questions about geometric partial differential equations.

Professor Bray has supervised 8 math Ph.D. graduates at Duke from 2006 to 2017. He is currently supervising one math Ph.D. student and one physics Ph.D. student. His most recent Ph.D. graduate, Henri Roesch, proved a Null Penrose Conjecture, open since 1973, as his thesis. While the physical motivation about the mass of black holes is the same as for the Riemannian Penrose Conjecture, the geometry involved is almost unrecognizably different, and may be viewed as a fundamental result about null geometry.

##### Education & Training
• Ph.D., Stanford University 1997

• B.A., Rice University 1992

Bray, HL, and Khuri, MA. "P. D. E. 'S which imply the penrose conjecture." Asian Journal of Mathematics 15.4 (January 1, 2011): 557-610. Full Text

Bray, H, Brendle, S, Eichmair, M, and Neves, A. "Area-Minimizing Projective Planes in 3-Manifolds." Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 63.9 (September 1, 2010): 1237-1247. Full Text

Bray, HL, and Khuri, MA. "A jang equation approach to the penrose inequality." Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems 27.2 (June 1, 2010): 741-766. Full Text

Bray, H, Brendle, S, and Neves, A. "Rigidity of area-minimizing two-spheres in three-manifolds." Communications in Analysis and Geometry 18.4 (January 1, 2010): 821-830. Full Text

Bray, HL, and Lee, DA. "On the Riemannian Penrose inequality in dimensions less than eight." Duke Mathematical Journal 148.1 (May 2009): 81-106. Full Text

Bray, H, and Miao, P. "On the capacity of surfaces in manifolds with nonnegative scalar curvature." Inventiones Mathematicae 172.3 (June 1, 2008): 459-475. Full Text

Bray, H, Hayward, S, Mars, M, and Simon, W. "Generalized inverse mean curvature flows in spacetime." Communications in Mathematical Physics 272.1 (May 1, 2007): 119-138. Full Text

Bray, HL, and Neves, A. "Classification of Prime 3-Manifolds with Yamabe Invariant Greater than RP^3." Annals of Mathematics 159.1 (January 2004): 407-424.

Bray, HL, and Iga, K. "Superharmonic functions in $\mathbf{R}^n$ and the Penrose inequality in general relativity." Communications in Analysis and Geometry 10.5 (2002): 999-1016. Full Text

Bray, HL. "Black Holes, Geometric Flows, and the Penrose Inequality in General Relativity." Notices of the American Mathematical Society 49.11 (2002): 1372-1381. (Academic Article)