A construction of collapsing spacetimes in vacuum (Q2192726)

The authors construct a class of collapsing spacetimes in vacuum without any symmetries. The spacetime contains a black hole region which is bounded from the past by the future event horizon. It possesses a Cauchy hypersurface with trivial topology which is located outside the black hole region. Based on existing techniques in the literature, the spacetime can in principle be constructed to be past geodesically complete and asymptotic to Minkowski spacetime. The construction is based on a semi-global existence result of the vacuum Einstein equations, built on a modified version of the a priori estimates that were originally established by \textit{D. Christodoulou} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 44, No. 3, 339--373 (1991; Zbl 0728.53061)] in his work on the formation of a trapped surface, and a gluing construction carried out inside the black hole. In particular, the full detail of the a priori estimates needed for the existence is provided, which can be regarded as a simplification of Christodoulou's orginal arguments.