PAllen said:
I don't see this balancing extrinsic curvature.
I'm actually no longer sure that's true in general, even if it turns out to be true in this particular case (see further comments below). So I would not want to hang my hat on the way I put it before.
PAllen said:
In the Milne case, both the intrinsic and extrinsic curvature of the hyperbolic slices are both negative, so far as I understand.
The intrinsic curvature is negative, but the extrinsic curvature is not. More precisely, the two obvious curvature invariants you can compute from the extrinsic curvature are not. (The extrinsic curvature itself is a second-rank tensor.)
The easiest way to compute the extrinsic curvature is to use Minkowski coordinates, since in those the connection coefficients vanish so covariant derivatives become simple partial derivatives. I will do the computation for the 1+1 case since that makes things much simpler, but I think everything I'm doing should generalize to the 1+3 case by symmetry. I will be using the general treatment given on slide 17 and 18 here:
http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~jav/LTCCmaterial/LTCCSlidesLecture2.pdf
First we need an expression for the normal ##n^a## to the spacelike slices. This will be the same as the 4-velocity of a comoving observer, and in Minkowski coordinates such an observer is moving with ordinary velocity ##v = x / t## for any coordinates ##(t, x)## in the upper "wedge" (i.e., the future light cone of the origin). So the 4-velocity of such an observer will be
$$
n^a = \gamma \partial_t + \gamma v \partial_x
$$
which expands out to
$$
n^a = \frac{t}{\sqrt{t^2 - x^2}} \partial_t + \frac{x}{\sqrt{t^2 - x^2}} \partial_x
$$
The covector corresponding to this just has the sign flipped in the first component (since we are using the ##-+++## signature convention):
$$
n_a = - \frac{t}{\sqrt{t^2 - x^2}} \text{d}t + \frac{x}{\sqrt{t^2 - x^2}} \text{d} x
$$
We will need the partial derivatives of the covector components, so we compute them now:
$$
\partial_0 n_0 = - \frac{1}{\sqrt{t^2 - x^2}} + \frac{t^2}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^{3/2}} = \frac{x^2}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^{3/2}}
$$
$$
\partial_0 n_1 = - \frac{t x}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^{3/2}} = \partial_1 n_0
$$
$$
\partial_1 n_1 = \frac{1}{\sqrt{t^2 - x^2}} + \frac{x^2}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^{3/2}} = \frac{t^2}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^{3/2}}
$$
The key observation that now simplifies the computation is that the "acceleration" of this 4-velocity is zero:
$$
a_a = n^b \nabla_b n_a = n^b \partial_b n_a
$$
The two components of this are:
$$
a_0 = n^0 \partial_0 n_0 + n^1 \partial_1 n_0
$$
$$
a_1 = n^0 \partial_0 n_1 + n^1 \partial_1 n_1
$$
If you work these out from the above computations of the partial derivatives you will see that they both vanish. (Physically, this just means that the worldlines of comoving observers are geodesics, so it makes sense, but it was still worth checking explicitly to see that it is true.) This means that we can use a simple formula for the extrinsic curvature:
$$
K_{ab} = \partial_a n_b
$$
where we have used the fact that ##\nabla \rightarrow \partial##. So we have already computed all of the components!
As we can see from the above, the diagonal components of ##K_{ab}## are positive and the off-diagonal components are negative. But if we compute the two obvious curvature invariants, we find that they are both positive; these are the trace:
$$
K = K_a{}^a = \eta^{ab} K_{ab} = - K_{00} + K_{11} = \frac{t^2 - x^2}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^{3/2}} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{t^2 - x^2}}
$$
and one that I don't know the name for, but it's the next order scalar invariant:
$$
K_{ab} K^{ab} = \left( K_{00} \right)^2 - 2 \left( K_{01} \right)^2 + \left( K_{11} \right)^2 \\
\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ = \frac{x^4}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^3} - \frac{2 t^2 x^2}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^3} + \frac{x^4}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^3} \\
\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ = \frac{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^2}{\left( t^2 - x^2 \right)^3} \\
\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ = \frac{1}{t^2 - x^2}
$$
These are both positive. For the 1+3 case I would expect them also to be positive, since for that case we can express the 4-velocities entirely in terms of a radial coordinate ##r## that ends up looking like ##x## in the above formulas (the angular coordinates remain constant along each comoving worldline).
However, I'm not sure whether this will lead to the extrinsic curvature canceling out the intrinsic curvature of the surfaces of constant time; I have not done that computation.