Rough solutions of the Einstein-vacuum equations (Q815032)

This is the first in a series of papers on solutions to the Cauchy problem for the vacuum Einstein equations. The authors extend known existence results for asymptotically flat settings to initial data of lower differentiability by half a derivative. These results cannot be obtained by the classical approach via energy estimates and Sobolev inequalities. The authors study the Einstein equations for wave coordinates for which they use Strichartz-type estimates. They combine paradifferential techniques with a geometric approach by exploiting the specific structure of the Einstein equations on null hypersurfaces. The present paper contains the main theorem and details of the proof except for results on the asymptotics and the Ricci defect which are presented in subsequent publications.