Refined gluing for vacuum Einstein constraint equations (Q476419)

This article deals with the existence of families of initial data sets for the Cauchy problem of the Einstein vacuum equations. It extends the previous work [\textit{L. Mazzieri}, ``Generalized gluing for Einstein constraint equations'', Calc. Var. Partial Differ. Equ. 34, No. 4, 453--473 (2009; \url{doi:10.1007/s00526-008-0191-4})] to the non-compact case with asymptotically Euclidean or asymptotically hyperbolic ends. The authors aim at showing that, from a pair \((M_i,g_i,\Pi_i)\), \(i=1,2\) of given such initial data sets solutions to the vacuum constraint equations (``vacuum initial data sets'' for short), a new vacuum initial data set exists on the manifold constructed as a connected sum \(M_1 \#_K M_2\) of \(M_1\) and \(M_2\) along a given compact submanifold \(K\). Their proof is based on the conformal method to solve the constraints, assuming that a generic condition holds (non-existence of any non-trivial conformal Killing vector field). Moreover, constancy of the mean curvature (the trace of \(\Pi_i\) w.r.t. \(g_i\)) is assumed in order to decouple the constraint equations. In addition, they show that this construction can be localized: under another generic condition, the obtained vacuum initial data on the connected sum can be perturbed to new ones which coincide respectively with \((g_i,\Pi_i)\), \(i=1,2\) outside a compact neighborhood of the gluing region.