We prove that analytic initial data on a light cone arising from a metric satisfying a "near-roundness" condition near the vertex lead to a solution of the vacuum Einstein equations to the future of the light-cone.
We derive explicit formulae for a set of constraints for the Einstein equations on a null hypersurface, in arbitrary dimensions. We solve these constraints and show that they provide necessary and sufficient conditions so that a spacetime solution of the Cauchy problem on a characteristic cone for the hyperbolic system of the reduced Einstein equations in wave-map gauge also satisfies the full Einstein equations. We prove a geometric uniqueness theorem for this Cauchy problem in the vacuum case.
We complement our work on the causality of upper semi-continuous distributions of cones with some results on Cauchy hypersurfaces. We prove that every locally stably acausal Cauchy hypersurface is stable. Then we prove that the signed distance $d_S$ from a spacelike hypersurface $S$ is, in a neighborhood of it, as regular as the hypersurface, and by using this fact we give a proof that every Cauchy hypersurface is the level set of a Cauchy temporal (and steep) function of the same regularity as the hypersurface. We also show that in a globally hyperbolic closed cone structure compact spacelike…
As complement to Class. Quantum Grav. 30 (2013) 235036 we analyze Killing initial data on characteristic Cauchy surfaces in conformally rescaled vacuum spacetimes satisfying Friedrich's conformal field equations. As an application, we derive and discuss the KID equations on a light-cone with vertex at past timelike infinity.
On arbitrary spacetimes, we study the characteristic Cauchy problem for Dirac fields on a light-cone. We prove the existence and uniqueness of solutions in the future of the light-cone inside a geodesically convex neighbourhood of the vertex. This is done for data in $L^2$ and we give an explicit definition of the space of data on the light-cone producing a solution in $H^1$. The method is based on energy estimates following L. Hörmander (J.F.A. 1990). The data for the characteristic Cauchy problem are only a half of the field, the other half is recovered from the characteristic data by integr…
We analyse the Cauchy problem on a characteristic cone, including its vertex, for the Einstein equations in arbitrary dimensions. We use a wave map gauge, solve the obtained constraints and show gauge conservation.
We show existence and uniqueness for timelike minimal submanifolds (world volume of p-branes) in ambient Lorentz manifolds admitting a time function in a neighborhood of the initial submanifold. The initial value formulation introduced and the conditions imposed on the initial data are given in purely geometric terms. Only an initial direction must be prescribed in order to provide uniqueness for the geometric problem. The result covers non-compact initial submanifolds of any codimension. By considering the angle of the initial direction and vector fields normal to the initial submanifold with…
We analyze vacuum Killing Initial Data on characteristic Cauchy surfaces. A general theorem on existence of Killing vectors in the domain of dependence is proved, and some special cases are analyzed in detail, including the case of bifurcate Killing horizons.
Starting from the Hawking--Page solutions, we consider the corresponding Lorentzian cone metrics. These represent cone interior scale-invariant vacuum solutions, defined in the chronological past of the scaling origin. We extend the Lorentzian Hawking--Page solutions to the cone exterior region in the class of $(4+1)$-dimensional scale-invariant vacuum solutions with an $SO(3)\times U(1)$ isometry, using the Kaluza--Klein reduction and the methods of Christodoulou. We prove that each Lorentzian Hawking--Page solution has extensions with a null curvature singularity, extensions with a spacelike…
We treat the calculation of gravitational radiation using the mixed timelike-null initial value formulation of general relativity. The determination of an exterior radiative solution is based on boundary values on a timelike worldtube $Γ$ and on characteristic data on an outgoing null cone emanating from an initial cross-section of $Γ$. We present the details of a 3-dimensional computational algorithm which evolves this initial data on a numerical grid, which is compactified to include future null infinity as finite grid points. A code implementing this algorithm is calibrated in the quasisphe…
Here we prove a global existence theorem for the solutions of the semi-linear wave equation with critical non-linearity admitting a positive definite Hamiltonian. Formulating a parametrix for the wave equation in a globally hyperbolic curved spacetime, we derive an apriori pointwise bound for the solution of the nonlinear wave equation in terms of the initial energy, from which the global existence follows in a straightforward way. This is accomplished in two steps. First, based on Moncrief's light cone formulation we derive an expression for the scalar field in terms of integrals over the pas…
We prove that global hyperbolicity is stable in the interval topology on the spacetime metrics. We also prove that every globally hyperbolic spacetime admits a Cauchy hypersurface which remains Cauchy under small perturbations of the spacetime metric. Moreover, we prove that if the spacetime admits a complete timelike Killing field, then the light cones can be widened preserving both global hyperbolicity and the Killing property of the field.
Some foundational results on the geometry of Lorentz-Minkowski spaces and Finsler spacetimes are obtained. We prove that the local light cone structure of a reversible Finsler spacetime with more than two dimensions is topologically the same as that of Lorentzian spacetimes: at each point we have just two strictly convex causal cones which intersect only at the origin. Moreover, we prove a reverse Cauchy-Schwarz inequality for these spaces and a corresponding reverse triangle inequality. The Legendre map is proved to be a diffeomorphism in the general pseudo-Finsler case provided the dimension…
In this paper we consider gauge invariant linear perturbations of the metric and matter tensors describing the self-similar Lemaître-Tolman-Bondi (timelike dust) spacetime containing a naked singularity. We decompose the angular part of the perturbation in terms of spherical harmonics and perform a Mellin transform to reduce the perturbation equations to a set of ordinary differential equations with singular points. We fix initial data so the perturbation is finite on the axis and the past null cone of the singularity, and follow the perturbation modes up to the Cauchy horizon. There we argue …
We analyze the Cauchy problem for the vacuum Einstein equations with data on a complete light-cone in an asymptotically Minkowskian space-time. We provide conditions on the free initial data which guarantee existence of global solutions of the characteristic constraint equations. We present necessary-and-sufficient conditions on characteristic initial data in $3+1$ dimensions to have no logarithmic terms in an asymptotic expansion at null infinity.
The Einstein equations in wave map gauge are a geometric second order system for a Lorentzian metric. To study existence of solutions of this hyperbolic quasi diagonal system with initial data on a characteristic cone which are not zero in a neighbourhood of the vertex one can appeal to theorems due to Cagnac and Dossa, proved for a scalar wave equation, for initial data in functional spaces relevant for their proofs. It is difficult to check that the initial data that we have constructed as solutions of the Einstein wave-map gauge constraints satisfy the more general of the Cagnac-Dossa hypot…
The main goal of this work consists in showing that the analytic solutions for a class of characteristic problems for the Einstein vacuum equations have an existence region larger than the one provided by the Cauchy-Kowalevski theorem, due to the intrinsic hyperbolicity of the Einstein equations. The magnitude of this region depends only on suitable $H_s$ Sobolev norms of the initial data for a fixed $s\leq 7$ and if the initial data are sufficiently small the analytic solution is global. In a previous paper, hereafter "I", we have described a geometric way of writing the vacuum Einstein equat…
We construct Hadamard states for Klein-Gordon fields in a spacetime $M_{0}$ equal to the interior of the future lightcone $C$ from a base point $p$ in a globally hyperbolic spacetime $(M, g)$. Under some regularity conditions at future infinity of $C$, we identify a boundary symplectic space of functions on $C$, which allows to construct states for Klein-Gordon quantum fields in $M_{0}$ from states on the CCR algebra associated to the boundary symplectic space. We formulate the natural microlocal condition on the boundary state on $C$ ensuring that the bulk state it induces in $M_{0}$ satisfie…
We obtain a system for the spatial metric and extrinsic curvature of a spacelike slice that is hyperbolic non-strict in the sense of Leray and Ohya and is equivalent to the Einstein equations. Its characteristics are the light cone and the normal to the slice for any choice of lapse and shift functions, and it admits a well-posed causal Cauchy problem in a Gevrey class of index $α=2$. The system becomes quasidiagonal hyperbolic if we posit a certain wave equation for the lapse function, and we can then relate the results to our previously obtained first order symmetric hyperbolic system for ge…
We prove that the focusing cubic wave equation in three spatial dimensions has a countable family of self-similar solutions which are smooth inside the past light cone of the singularity. These solutions are labeled by an integer index $n$ which counts the number of oscillations of the solution. The linearized operator around the $n$-th solution is shown to have $n+1$ negative eigenvalues (one of which corresponds to the gauge mode) which implies that all $n>0$ solutions are unstable. It is also shown that all $n>0$ solutions have a singularity outside the past light cone which casts doubt on …
We consider a very general class of nonlinear wave equations, which admit trivial solutions and not necessarily verify any form of null conditions. For compactly supported small data, one can only have a semi-global result which states that the solutions are well-posed upto a finite time-span depending on the size of the Cauchy data. For some of the equations of the class, the solutions blow up within a finite time for the compactly supported data of any size. For data prescribed on ${\mathbb R}^3\setminus B_R$ with small weighted energy, without some form of null conditions on the nonlinearit…
In this paper, we prove the global nonlinear stability of Minkowski space in the context of the spacelike-characteristic Cauchy problem for Einstein vacuum equations. Spacelike-characteristic initial data are posed on a compact 3-disk and on the future complete null hypersurface emanating from its boundary. Our result extends the seminal stability result for Minkowski space proved by Christodoulou and Klainerman for which initial data are prescribed on a spacelike 3-plane. The proof relies on the classical vectorfield method and bootstrapping argument from Christodoulou-Klainerman. The main no…
The main goal of this work consists in showing that the analytic solutions for a class of characteristic problems for the Einstein vacuum equations have an existence region larger than the one provided by the Cauchy-Kowalevski theorem due to the intrinsic hyperbolicity of the Einstein equations. To prove this result we first describe a geometric way of writing the vacuum Einstein equations for the characteristic problems we are considering, in a gauge characterized by the introduction of a double null cone foliation of the spacetime. Then we prove that the existence region for the analytic sol…