A localized spacetime Penrose inequality and horizon detection with quasi-local mass

Abstract: For an admissible class of smooth compact initial data sets with boundary, we prove a comparison theorem between the Wang/Liu-Yau quasi-local mass of the boundary and the Hawking mass of strictly minimizing hulls in the Jang graphs of the domain. Using this, we prove a quasi-local Penrose inequality that involves these quasi-local masses of the boundary and the area of an outermost marginally outer trapped surface (MOTS) in the domain or the area of minimizing minimal surface within the Jang graphs. Moreover, we obtain sufficient conditions for the (non)existence of a MOTS within a domain, in the spirit of the folklore hoop conjecture.