Asymptotic behaviour of the gravitational field and the nature of singularities in Gowdy spacetimes (Q756738)

The authors investigate the behaviour of the gravitational field in the neighbourhood of singularities in so-called polarized Gowdy spacetimes. They show rigorously that, as one approaches the singularity, the metric field of any of these vacuum solutions of Einstein's field equations asymptotically approaches a solution of a truncated system of equations in which spatial curvature terms have been dropped. Consequently the gravitational fields of Gowdy spacetimes spatially decouple near the singularity.