Jacques Smulevici

Quasimodes and a lower bound on the uniform energy decay rate for Kerr–AdS spacetimes

We construct quasimodes for the Klein-Gordon equation on the black hole exterior of Kerr-Anti-de Sitter (Kerr-AdS) spacetimes. Such quasi-modes are associated with time-periodic approximate solutions of the Klein Gordon equation and provide natural candidates to probe the decay of solutions on these backgrounds. They are constructed as the solutions of a semi-classical non-linear eigenvalue problem arising after separation of variables, with the (inverse of the) angular momentum playing the role of the semi-classical parameter. Our construction results in exponentially small errors in the semi-classical parameter. This implies that general solutions to the Klein Gordon equation on Kerr-AdS cannot decay faster than logarithmically. The latter result completes previous work by the authors, where a logarithmic decay rate was established as an upper bound.

Stability of Schwarzschild-AdS for the Spherically Symmetric Einstein-Klein-Gordon System

In this paper, we study the global behavior of solutions to the spherically symmetric coupled Einstein-Klein-Gordon (EKG) system in the presence of a negative cosmological constant. For the Klein-Gordon mass-squared satisfying a ≥ −1 (the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound being a > −9/8), we prove that the Schwarzschild-AdS spacetimes are asymptotically stable: Small perturbations of Schwarzschild-AdS initial data again lead to regular black holes, with the metric on the black hole exterior approaching, at an exponential rate, a Schwarzschild-AdS spacetime. The main difficulties in the proof arise from the lack of monotonicity for the Hawking mass and the asymptotically AdS boundary conditions, which render even (part of) the orbital stability intricate. These issues are resolved in a bootstrap argument on the black hole exterior, with the redshift effect and weighted Hardy inequalities playing the fundamental role in the analysis. Both integrated decay and pointwise decay estimates are obtained. As a corollary of our estimates on the Klein-Gordon field, one obtains in particular exponential decay in time of spherically-symmetric solutions to the linear Klein-Gordon equation on Schwarzschild-AdS.

Self-Gravitating Klein-Gordon Fields in Asymptotically Anti-de-Sitter Spacetimes

We initiate the study of the spherically symmetric Einstein–Klein–Gordon system in the presence of a negative cosmological constant, a model appearing frequently in the context of high-energy physics. Due to the lack of global hyperbolicity of the solutions, the natural formulation of dynamics is that of an initial boundary value problem, with boundary conditions imposed at null infinity. We prove a local well-posedness statement for this system, with the time of existence of the solutions depending only on an invariant H2-type norm measuring the size of the Klein–Gordon field on the initial data. The proof requires the introduction of a renormalized system of equations and relies crucially on r-weighted estimates for the wave equation on asymptotically AdS spacetimes. The results provide the basis for our companion paper establishing the global asymptotic stability of Schwarzschild-Anti-de-Sitter within this system.

The stability of the Minkowski space for the Einstein–Vlasov system

We prove the global stability of the Minkowski space viewed as the trivial solution of the Einstein-Vlasov system. To estimate the Vlasov field, we use the vector field and modified vector field techniques developed in [FJS15; FJS17]. In particular, the initial support in the velocity variable does not need to be compact. To control the effect of the large velocities, we identify and exploit several structural properties of the Vlasov equation to prove that the worst non-linear terms in the Vlasov equation either enjoy a form of the null condition or can be controlled using the wave coordinate gauge. The basic propagation estimates for the Vlasov field are then obtained using only weak interior decay for the metric components. Since some of the error terms are not time-integrable, several hierarchies in the commuted equations are exploited to close the top order estimates. For the Einstein equations, we use wave coordinates and the main new difficulty arises from the commutation of the energy-momentum tensor, which needs to be rewritten using the modified vector fields.

Weakly regular

Under weak regularity assumptions, only, we develop a fully geometric theory of vacuum Einstein spacetimes with T2 symmetry, establish the global well-posedness of the initial value problem for Einsteins field equations, and investigate the global causal structure of the constructed spacetimes. Our weak regularity assumptions are the minimal ones allowing to give a meaning to the Einstein equations under the assumed symmetry and to solve the initial value problem. First of all, we introduce a frame adapted to the symmetry in which each Christoffel symbol can be checked to belong to some Lp space. We identify certain cancellation properties taking place in the expression of the Riemann and Ricci curvatures, and this leads us to a reformulation of the initial value problem for the Einstein field equations when the initial data set has weak regularity. Second, we investigate the future development of a weakly regular initial data set. We check that the area R of the orbits of symmetry must grow to infinity in the future timelike directions, and we establish the existence of a global foliation by the level sets of R. Our weak regularity assumptions only require that R is Lipschitz continuous while the metric coefficients describing the initial geometry of the orbits of symmetry are in the Sobolev space H1 and the remaining coefficients have even weaker regularity. We develop here the compactness arguments required to cover the natural level of regularity associated with the energy of the system of partial differential equations determined from Einsteins field equations.

T^2

We investigate the late-time asymptotics of future expanding, polarized vacuum Einstein spacetimes with T2-symmetry on T3, which, by definition, admit two spacelike Killing fields. Our main result is the existence of a stable asymptotic regime within this class, that is, we provide here a full description of the late-time asymptotics of the solutions to the Einstein equations when the initial data set is close to the asymptotic regime. Our proof is based on several energy functionals with lower order corrections (as is standard for such problems) and the derivation of a simplified model which we exhibit here. Roughly speaking, the Einstein equations in the symmetry class under consideration consists of a system of wave equations coupled to constraint equations plus a system of ordinary differential equations. The unknowns involved in the system of ordinary equations are blowing up in the future timelike directions. One of our main contributions is the derivation of novel effective equations for suitably renormalized unknowns. Interestingly, this renormalization is not performed with respect to a fixed background, but does involve the energy of the coupled system of wave equations. In addition, we construct an open set of initial data which are arbitrarily close to the expected asymptotic behavior. We emphasize that, in comparison, the class of Gowdy spacetimes exhibits a very different dynamical behavior to the one we uncover in the present work for general polarized T2-symmetric spacetimes. Furthermore, all the conclusions of this paper are valid within the framework of weakly T2-symmetric spacetimes previously introduced by the authors.