Shock waves and gravitational waves in matter spacetimes with Gowdy symmetry (Q2168006)

Summary: In the context of classical general relativity, we consider the matter Einstein equations for perfect fluids on Gowdy spacetimes with plane-symmetry. Such spacetimes admit two commuting Killing vector fields and contain gravitational waves; the fluid variable may exhibit shock waves. We establish the existence of a bounded variation solution to the Cauchy problem, which is defined globally until either a true singularity occurs in the geometry (e.g. the vanishing of the area of the 2-dimensional space-like orbits of the symmetry group) or a blow-up of the energy density takes place.