Causal geometries, null geodesics, and gravity

Abstract: The authors study a generalized notion of null geodesic defined by the Legendrian dynamics of a regular conical subbundle of the tangent bundle on a manifold. A natural extension of the Weyl tensor is shown to exist, and to depend only on this conical subbundle. Given a suitable defining function of the conical bundle, the Raychaudhuri--Sachs equations of general relativity continue to hold, and give rise to the same phenomenon of covergence of null geodesics in regions of positive energy that underlies the theory of gravitation.