However, the construction is not complete. First, the construction does not work for 2-surfaces whose
topology is different from , and does not work even for certain topological 2-spheres for which the
2-surface twistor equation admits more than four independent solutions (‘exceptional 2-surfaces’). Second,
two additional objects, the so-called infinity twistor and a Hermitian inner product on the space of 2-surface
twistors, are needed to get the energy-momentum and angular momentum from the kinematical twistor and
to ensure their reality. The latter is needed if we want to define the quasi-local mass as a norm of
the kinematical twistor. However, no natural infinity twistor has been found, and no natural
Hermitian scalar product can exist if the 2-surface cannot be embedded into a conformally flat
spacetime. In addition, in the small surface calculations the quasi-local mass may be complex. If,
however, we do not want to form invariants of the kinematical twistor (e.g. the mass), but we
want to extract the energy-momentum and angular momentum from the kinematical twistor
and we want them to be real, then only a special combination of the infinity twistor and the
Hermitian scalar product, the so-called ‘bar-hook combination’ (see Equation (51
)), would be
needed.
To save the main body of the construction, the definition of the kinematical twistor was modified. Nevertheless, the mass in the modified constructions encountered an inherent ambiguity in the small surface approximation. One can still hope to find an appropriate ‘bar-hook’, and hence real energy-momentum and angular momentum, but invariants, such as norms, could not be formed.
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