A minimization problem for the lapse and the initial-boundary value problem for Einstein's field equations
- Creators
- Nagy, Gabriel
- Sarbach, Olivier
Abstract
We discuss the initial-boundary value problem of general relativity. Previous considerations for a toy model problem in electrodynamics motivate the introduction of a variational principle for the lapse with several attractive properties. In particular, we show that the resulting elliptic gauge condition for the lapse together with a suitable condition for the shift and constraint preserving boundary conditions controlling the Weyl scalar Ψ_0 yields a priori estimates on the metric, connection and curvature fields. These estimates are expected to be useful for obtaining awell-posed initial-boundary value problem for metric formulations of Einstein's field equations which are commonly used in numerical relativity. To present a simple and explicit example, we consider the 3 + 1 decomposition introduced by York of the field equations on a cubic domain with two periodic directions and prove in the weak field limit that our gauge condition for the lapse, an a priori specified shift vector and our boundary conditions lead to a well-posed problem. The method discussed here is quite general and should also yield well-posed problems for different ways of writing the evolution equations, including first-order symmetric hyperbolic or mixed first-order second-order formulations. Well-posed initial-boundary value formulations for the linearization about arbitrary stationary configurations will be presented elsewhere.
Additional Information
© 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd. Received 26 January 2006, in final form 3 April 2006. Published 27 July 2006. It is a pleasure to thank H Beyer, G Calabrese, M Holst, L Lehner, H Pfeiffer, O Reula and M Tiglio for helpful discussions and suggestions and D Reynolds for reading the manuscript. This research was supported in part by NSF grant PHY-0099568, by a grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to Caltech and by NSF DMS Award 0411723 to UCSD.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 23878
- DOI
- 10.1088/0264-9381/23/16/S11
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20110602-111538274
- PHY-0099568
- NSF
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- 0411723
- NSF DMS
- Created
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2011-06-15Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-07-12Created from EPrint's last_modified field