---
title: "Dominant energy condition"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Dominant energy condition"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-10-30T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["stress-energy tensor","general relativity","energy conditions","natural equation","symmetric hyperbolic systems"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


A standard energy condition in general relativity requiring that, for every observer, the local energy density is non-negative and the energy-momentum flux measured by that observer is non-spacelike — informally, that energy never flows faster than light and is never measured as negative.

Matters to this vault as a condition [[entity-james-owen-weatherall|Weatherall]] and Eleanor March's 2026 paper shows follows automatically, for a wide class of theories, from naturality and minimal coupling alone: because the Hilbert stress-energy tensor is often exactly the kind of natural hyperbolization tensor their theorems constrain, any matter theory whose stress-energy tensor secures symmetric hyperbolicity inherits the dominant energy condition as a side effect, not an independently imposed physical postulate.

## References
- [[claim-march-weatherall-natural-maximal-hyperbolizations-satisfy-dominant-energy-condition]]