Localizing solutions of the Einstein constraint equations (Q328869): Difference between revisions

In this article the authors describe a new glueing method to construct new asymptotically flat (with a single end) solutions of the vacuum Einstein's constraint equations. The method has the advantage that the corresponding solutions have optimal localization properties, namely are exactly trivial on the complement of an infinite cone of arbitrary small positive aperture running toward the infinitely distant end (see Theorem 2.3 in the article). By iterating this method the authors have been able to obtain new asymptotically flat (with a single end) solutions of the vacuum Einstein's constraint equations describing \(N\) isolated ``bodies'' (or rather one should call them as ``geometric lumps'' because they do not contain matter) such that they gravitationally do not interact at all for arbitrary long finite initial times (see Theorem 6.1 in the article). This \textit{gravitational shielding phenomenon} in general relativity -- due to the non-linearity of Einstein's equations -- is in striking contrast with the properties of gravitational interaction in Newtonian gravity. The proof of the theorems is based on first solving the glueing problem of the linearized constraint equations (Section 4 in the article) and then applying a Picard iteration scheme to solve the full non-linear problem (see Section 5 in the article). As an auxiliary comment it is worth mentioning that gravitational shielding has not been well understood yet but might explain some observed astrophysical anomalies related to moving bodies in strong gravitational fields: for example the failure of the predictions of the infall in 2014 of a \(3\) Earth mass hydrogen cloud (called \(G2\)) orbiting very close around the supermassive black hole candidate in our Milky Way.