GR19 Mexico July 5–9 2010

A2 session: Mathematical Relativity and

Other Progress in Classical Gravity Theory
Chair: Sergio Dain
June 30, 2010

Schedule
Monday

• 14:00 14:30 Abhay Ashtekar

• 14:30 15:00 Robert Wald

• 15:00 15:15 Sumio Yamada

• 15:15 15:30 Mu-Tao Wang

• 15:30 15:45 Gyula Fodor

• 15:45 16:00 Michael Reisenberger

• Break

• 18:45 19:00 Keiju Murata

• 19:00 19:15 Christian Luebbe

• 19:15 19:25 Marı́a Eugenia Gabach Clément

• 19:25 19:35 Ernesto Nungesser

• 19:35 19:45 Luis Filipe Costa

Thursday

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 • 14:00 14:30 Helmut Friedrich

• 14:30 14:45 Håkan Andreasson

• 14:45 15:00 Gustavo Dotti

• 15:00 15:15 Carlos Kozameh

• 15:15 15:30 José M M Senovilla

• 15:30 15:45 Alejandro Perez

• 15:45 16:00 Luca Lusanna

• Break

• 16:30 17:00 Piotr Chrusciel

• 17:00 17:15 Beverly Berger

• 17:15 17:30 Woei Chet Lim

• 17:30 17:45 Oscar Reula

• 17:45 18:00 István Rácz

• 18:00 18:15 Osvaldo Moreschi

• 18:15 18:30 Ram Gopal Vishwakarma

Friday

• 14:00 14:30 Jim Isenberg

• 14:30 14:45 Omar Eduardo Ortiz

• 14:45 15:00 Juan Antonio Valiente Kroon

• 15:00 15:15 Florian Beyer

• 15:15 15:30 Andrés Aceña

• 15:30 15:45 Alberto Chamorro

• 15:45 16:00 Ernesto Fabian Eiroa

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Titles and abstracts
Monday

1. Abhay Ashtekar: Evaporation of 2-d Black Holes

The Callen-Giddings-Harvey-Strominger black holes provide a simple
yet conceptually interesting setting for mathematical general relativity.
One can study the gravitational collapse to black hole formation analyti-
cally. The mean field approximation to full quantum equations provides
interesting PDEs. Although they were studied analytically and numer-
ically a decade ago, more careful investigation has recently shown that
some of the underlying concepts (such as the notion of Bondi energy
that was used) were flawed and the prevailing intuition on what happens
during black hole evaporation has to be seriously corrected. While the
primary motivation of this investigation came from the issue of possi-
ble information loss, this talk will focus on the analytical and numerical
aspects of the PDEs. The unforeseen conclusions they lead to suggest
that it would be fruitful to analyze these PDEs rigorously. Various parts
of this research were carried out in collaboration with Frans Pretorius,
Fethi Ramazanoglu, Victor Taveras and Madhavan Varadarajan.

2. Robert Wald: Gravitational Self-Force

It is well known that a sufficiently small “test body” in general relativity
will move on a geodesic of the background spacetime metric. It is of
considerable interest to determine the deviations from geodesic motion
resulting from self-force effects. I describe work with Gralla that rig-
orously derives perturbative corrections to geodesic motion due to the
finite size and mass of the body. The status of the MiSaTaQuWa equa-
tion as a “self-consistent perturbative equation” is explained.

3. Sumio Yamada: Riemannian Penrose inequality revisited

We re-examine the proof by Hugh Bray of the Riemannian Penrose in-
equality using the conformal method. In particular in our new approach,
we take a dual variational viewpoint of the inequality, fixing the ADM
mass while changing the geometry of the threefold to maximize the area
of the outermost horizon. This is a joint work with Gilbert Weinstein.

4. Mu-Tao Wang: On the notion of quasilocal mass in general

relativity

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 There have been many attempts to define quasilocal mass for a spacelike
2-surface in a spacetime by the Hamilton-Jacobi method. The essential
difficulty in this approach is the subtle choice of the background configu-
ration to be subtracted from the physical Hamiltonian. Quasilocal mass
should be positive for general surfaces, but on the other hand should
be zero for surfaces in the flat spacetime. In this talk, I shall discribe
how to use isometric embeddings into the Minkowski space to overcome
this difficulty and propose a new definition of gauge-independent quasi-
local mass that has the desired properties, in addition to other natural
requirements for a mass. This talk is based on a joint work with Shing-
Tung Yau at Harvard.

5. Gyula Fodor: Lifetime of gravitationally bound oscillating

scalar lumps (oscillatons)
Apparently periodic spherically symmetric localized oscillating configu-
rations (oscillatons) formed by a massive scalar field coupled to gravity
have been found by Seidel and Suen in 1991. By all practical numerical
methods oscillatons appear to be time-periodic. It was first pointed out
by Don N. Page in 2004 that these states should necessarily lose energy
by slowly emitting scalar radiation. I would like to present a method for
the calculation of the transcendentally small amplitude of the outgoing
waves in the limit when the central amplitude of the oscillaton is small.
The method involves the study of the Fourier mode equations near a
pole in the complex plane and Borel summation. Substituting physi-
cally plausible scalar field mass values into the results, it turns out that
the time-scale on which the mass of the oscillaton changes is generally
comparable to the age of the universe.

6. Michael Reisenberger: Symplectic structure on free null ini-

tial data for gravity
Free initial data for general relativity on a pair of intersecting null
hypersurfaces are well known, but the lack of a Poisson bracket and
concerns about caustics have stymied the development of a constraint
free canonical theory. A way of neatly avoiding the problem of caustics
and generator crossings will be explained and a Poisson bracket on free
data will be presented. On sufficiently regular functions of the solution
spacetime geometry this bracket matches the Peierls bracket defined on
such functions by the Hilbert action. Some mysterious features of the
Poisson bracket found will be discussed and explained.

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7. Keiju Murata: Non-equilibrium Condensation Process in a
Holographic Superconductor
We study the non-equilibrium condensation process in the holographic
superconductor. When the temperature T is smaller than a critical tem-
perature Tc , there are two black hole solutions, the Reissner-Nordstrom-
AdS black hole and a black hole with a scalar hair. In the bound-
ary theory, they can be regarded as the supercooled normal phase and
the superconducting phase, respectively. We consider perturbations on
supercooled Reissner-Nordstrom-AdS black holes and study their non-
linear time evolution to know about physical phenomena associated with
rapidly-cooled superconductors. We find that, for T < Tc , the initial
perturbations grow exponentially and, eventually, spacetimes approach
the hairy black holes. We also clarify how the relaxation process from a
far-from-equilibrium state proceeds in the boundary theory by observing
the time dependence of the superconducting order parameter. Finally,
we study the time evolution of event and apparent horizons and dis-
cuss their correspondence with the entropy of the boundary theory. Our
result gives a first step toward the holographic understanding of the
non-equilibrium process in superconductors.

8. Christian Luebbe: Non-linear stability for radiative Einstein-

Maxwell spacetimes
We present recent results on the stability of solutions to the Einstein-
Maxwell equations. The analysis is carried out using the conformal
field equations. In particular we use a gauge based on conformal curves
that leads to reduced field equations. Moreover this gauge choice gives
us a priori knowledge of the location of the conformal boundary of the
perturbed solution, which will be shown to be regular. The reference
spacetimes employed in the stability analysis are derived using a result
by Simon. In detail, solutions of the electrostatic field equations are
used to obtain initial data for the Einstein-Maxwell equations that lead
to smooth solutions in a neighbourhood of timelike infinity. Our work
uses hyperboloidal initial data for the perturbations and the results are
hence semi-global in nature. A remarkable point about the overall anal-
ysis is that very little explicit knowledge of the reference spacetimes is
required. Instead the geometrical properties of the field equations and
the solutions are employed to obtain the result presented here.

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 9. Marı́a Eugenia Gabach Clement: Extreme black hole’s initial
data and its perturbations
We discuss the existence of extreme black holeś initial data for Einstein
equations. These initial data have similar properties to the extreme
Kerr and Reissner-Nördstrom data. In particular, we find that in this
extreme limit one of the asymptotic ends is cylindrical, and the total
mass is a minimum among the black hole family. We also treat pertur-
bations of these extreme data and obtain the same asymptotic geometry
with the area of the cylindrical end preserved. The procedure employed
can be implemented in conformally flat initial data, and also in extreme
Kerr black hole.

10. Ernesto Nungesser: Isotropization of non-diagonal Bianchi I-

symmetric spacetimes with collisionless matter at late times
assuming small data
Assuming that the space-time is close to isotropic in the sense that
the shear parameter is small and that the maximal velocity of the par-
ticles is bounded, we have been able to show that for non-diagonal
Bianchi I-symmetric spacetimes with collisionless matter the asymp-
totic behaviour at late times is close to the special case of dust. We
also have been able to show that all the Kasner exponents converge to 31
and an asymptotic expression for the induced metric has been obtained.
The key was a bootstrap argument.

11. Luis Filipe Costa: Spinning test particles in general relativity

— exact gravito-electromagnetic analogies
We compare the covariant equation describing the electromagnetic force
exerted on a magnetic dipole with Papapetrouś equation for the grav-
itational force exerted on a spinning test particle. We show that, if
Pirani supplementary spin condition holds, there is an exact and fully
general analogy relating these two forces: both are determined by a con-
traction of the spin 4-vector with a magnetic-type tidal tensor. These
tidal tensors [PRD 78 024021, 2008] obey strikingly similar equations,
which, in turn, are a covariant form of Maxwellś equations and (some
of ) Einsteinś field equations. We exemplify by considering gyroscopes
in Schwarzschild and Kerr spacetimes, and comparing with the analo-
gous situation of magnetic dipoles moving in the electromagnetic field
of non-spinning and spinning charges. It is shown that, in the special
case that the test particleś center of mass is at rest and far from the sta-
tionary source, the two forces are similar (which is in acco rdance with
the results known from linearized theory [PRD 6 406, 1972]); but that

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 for generic dynamics key differences arise. These differences, which are
transparent in the symmetries of the tidal tensors, shed light on many
aspects of spin curvature coupling. In particular we show that: 1) in
the Kerr spacetime there are velocities for which no force is exerted on
the gyroscope, which in the electromagnetic analogue is forbidden by
the laws of electromagnetic induction; 2) that the electromagnetic force
on a dipole has a non-vanishing time projection, which is the power
transferred to it by Faradayś induction, and is reflected in a varia-
tion of its proper mass, whereas the fact that the force on a gyroscope
is spatial signals the absence of an analogous gravitational effect, ex-
plaining the conservation of its proper mass; 3) whereas the total work
done on a magnetic dipole by a stationary magnetic field is zero, a sta-
tionary gravitomagnetic field, by contrast, does work on mass currents,
which is shown to quantitatively explain the Hawking-Wald Spin Inter-
action Energy [PRL. 26 1344, 1971; PRD 6 406, 1972]. Central to the
understanding of these forces is the issue of hidden momentum (e.g.
[arXiv:1004.0679]), whose dynamical implications are also discussed.

Thursday

12. Helmut Friedrich: On radiative and static vacuum space-times

The detailed understanding of asymptotically flat solution near the “crit-
ical sets”, i.e. in the region where space-like infinity touches null in-
finity, will allow us to relate analytically physical concepts defined on
Cauchy data to physical concepts defined on null infinity. Moreover,
it offers possibilities to calculate numerically the entire development in
time of Cauchy data, including its asymptotic structure and radiation
field, by solving finite Cauchy problems. In this talk we report on re-
sults about the behaviour of gravitational fields near the critical sets.
In the case of time reflection symmetric Cauchy data evidence is in-
creasing that (finite) smoothness at null infinity is related to the data
being asymptotically static (up to a given order). This motivated and is
confirmed by studies of the existence and asymptotic behaviour of static
data and their conformal classes. We will discuss the significance of
these results for the analysis of gravitational fields near the critical sets.

13. Håkan Andreasson: Existence of axially symmetric static so-

lutions of the Einstein-Vlasov system.
We prove the existence of static, asymptotically flat non-vacuum space-
times with axial symmetry where the matter is modeled as a collisionless

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 gas. The axially symmetric solutions of the resulting Einstein-Vlasov
system are obtained via the implicit function theorem by perturbing off
a suitable spherically symmetric steady state of the Vlasov-Poisson sys-
tem. This is a joint work with M. Kunze and G. Rein.

14. Gustavo Dotti: Cosmic censorship and linear stability

The current status of an ongoing program to study the linear stability of
the most notable naked singularities: the negative mass Schwarzschild
spacetime, the super-extreme Reissner-Nördstrom and the super-extreme
Kerr solutions, is reviewed. Theses spaces are found to be unstable, a
fact with implications on the weak cosmic censorship conjecture. In
connection with strong cosmic censorship, the proof of the instability of
the region beyond the Cauchy horizon of a Reissner-Nördstrom black
hole is given. The initial value problem for perturbations in the spheri-
cal symmetric cases above present a number of technical difficulties that
were overcome using intertwiners. The geometrical meaning of the in-
tertwined perturbation fields is explained.

15. Carlos Kozameh: Equations of motion for Spin and Center of

mass in an asymptotically flat space time
We show that from the knowledge of asymptotically shear-free null geodesic
congruences, i.e., congruences with shear that vanishes at future con-
formal null infinity we can define the notion of the center-of-mass for
asymptotically flata space times and its equations of motion. This in-
cludes a kinematic meaning, in terms of the center of mass motion,
for the Bondi three-momentum. In addition, we obtain insights into
intrinsic spin and, in general, angular momentum, including an angu-
lar momentum conservation law with well-defined flux terms. When a
Maxwell field is present the asymptotically shear-free congruences allow
us to determine/define at infinity a center-of-charge world-line and in-
trinsic magnetic dipole moment.

16. José M M Senovilla: The boundary of the region with closed

trapped surfaces
The boundary of the region in spacetime containing closed trapped sur-
faces is considered. In asymptotically flat black hole spacetimes, this
boundary will generally be strictly inside the event horizon. However,
it will be outside any dynamical/trapping horizon associated to the event
horizon. Actually, closed trapped surfaces can enter flat portions of the

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 spacetime whose whole causal past is also flat. Explicit examples will
be presented, and open questions will be analyzed. (Co-authored with
Ingemar Bengtsson).

17. Alejandro Perez: Regular isolated black holes

We consider asymptotically flat spacetimes containing a black hole. We
show that mild regularity conditions, in addition to the peeling condi-
tions required by asymptotic flatness, severely restrict the fall-off be-
havior of the radiation for asymptotically late observers at future null
infinity (u—-¿Infinity). More precisely, we argue that at null infinity,
the radiation must fall-off exponentially with an exponent proportional
to an integer times a characteristic coefficient which coincides with the
surface gravity for stationary black holes.

18. Luca Lusanna: ADM Gravity in the York Canonical Basis: Is

Dark Matter a Relativistic Inertial Effect?
In special and general relativity the synchronization convention of dis-
tant clocks may be simulated with a mathematical definition of global
non-inertial frames (the only ones existing in general relativity due
to the equivalence principle) with well-defined instantaneous 3-spaces.
For globally hyperbolic asymptotically Minkowskian spacetimes without
supertranslations this procedure can be used at the Hamiltonian level
(ADM tetrad gravity ) in the recently found York canonical basis (di-
agonalizing the York-Lichnerowicz approach), where it is possible for
the first time to disentangle tidal gravitational degrees of freedom from
gauge inertial ones. The most important inertial effect connected with
clock synchronization (absent in Newtonian gravity) is the York time
3
K, the trace of the extrinsic curvature of 3-space. It is possible to make
a Post-Minkowskian linearization of the Hamilton equations in the fam-
ily of non-harmonic 3-orthogonal gauges parametrized by the York time.
Post-Minkowskian gravitational waves with asymptotic background can
be defined: they propagate in non-Euclidean 3-spaces and enjoy of all
the standard properties. The Post-Newtonian limit of relativistic par-
ticles coupled to ADM gravity shows the possibility to describe dark
matter as a relativistic inertial effect inside Einstein general relativity
in a Post-Minkowskian reformulation of the Celestial Reference Frame
ICRS taking into account the York time, which has to be fitted to the ro-
tation curves of galaxies. References: Gen.Rel.Grav. 39 (2007); arXiv
0907.4087 and 1003.5143 (review in arXiv 0912.2935)

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19. Piotr Chrusciel: The Cauchy problem on the light cone
I will present existence and uniqueness theorems for the Cauchy prob-
lem for the Einstein equations on a light-cone.

20. Beverly Berger: Exploring the phenomenology of the BKL

conjecture for spatially inhomogeneous cosmologies
Long ago, Belinskii, Khalatnikov, and Lifshitz (BKL) argued that the
approach to the singularity in generic gravitational collapse behaved
locally as a spatially homogeneous cosmology that was either velocity
dominated (Kasner-like) or oscillatory (Mixmaster-like). This means
that, operationally, in a numerical simulation of generic collapse, the
PDEś of general relativity can be replaced at each spatial point by ODEś
describing either the Kasner or Mixmaster cosmology. Numerical sim-
ulations of collapse in spatially inhomogeneous cosmologies support this
argument. This suggests that, if one assumes this BKL conjecture to be
true, one could explore the phenomenology of generic collapse by evolv-
ing, e.g., Mixmaster equations on a spatial grid with spatially dependent
(smooth) initial conditions. The well known sensitivity to initial con-
ditions would then be expected to yield an interesting, and potentially
informative, visualization of the approach to the singularit y. While
this BKL regime is reached at different (BKL) time for different spatial
points, it is likely that sufficiently close to the singularity, almost all
(i.e., except at a set of measure zero) spatial points are in this regime.
An algorithm originally developed by Garfinkle will be used to generate
each local Mixmaster evolution. Numerical and analytic results in one
spatial dimension will be presented along with comparison to genuine
spatially inhomogeneous simulations.

21. Woei Chet Lim: Spike crossings in spacetimes with one Killing
vector field
Traditionally, dynamics near spacelike singularities was described by
chaotic Mixmaster/BKL dynamics. Spacetimes with two commuting
Killing vector fields exhibit a new phenomenon, namely spikes, which
are sub-horizon inhomogeneous structures whose dynamics differs from
BKL dynamics. I will report on the latest progress in the study of the
crossings of two spikes in the context of spacetimes with one Killing
vector field.

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22. Oscar Reula: On the geometrical uniqueness of the initial-
boundary value problem in general relativity.
In recent years considerable advances have been achieved in understand-
ing the boundary value problem in general relativity. In particular,
starting with the harmonic formulation of the evolution equations it
was found that there were large families of boundary data for which the
system was strongly well posed, that is stable. Those conditions include
many which were consistent with constraint propagation, in the sense
that if initially the constraints were satisfied they would remain so for
the whole evolution, and among them some for which all the rest of the
fields satisfied non-incoming radiation conditions. Thus they were all
candidates for being good conditions to represent radiating isolated sys-
tems. But the gauge conditions are intermixed in all these conditions
and it is not clear which ones are better for such a representation. One
way to explore this set of conditions is to ask for the following geo-
metrical uniqueness questions: Can we specify instructions to impose
boundary conditions in such a way that two renditions of such instruc-
tions, for the same initial data, would result in the same space-time?
That is the resulting evolutions would be linked each other by a dif-
feomorphism? In this work we analyze the problem in the linearized
version and see that there is a set of preferred conditions which satisfy
certain geometrical uniqueness, but also see that there remains an am-
biguity.

23. István Rácz: On the topology of strictly stable surfaces

It is shown that strictly stable surfaces do possess exactly the same topo-
logical properties as strictly stable MOTS in higher dimensional (n ≥ 4)
spacetimes. In deriving this result no field equation is applied only a
generalized form of the dominant energy condition is required to hold.

24. Osvaldo Moreschi: Asymptotic global physical quantities in

numerical relativity
It is very well known that difficulties arise in numerical representations
of spacetimes, when gravitational radiation, total momentum and angu-
lar momentum are estimated at finite distances. We point out several
possible problems that might arise from gauge and tetrad ambiguities.
We indicate how to remove these freedom. We report on resent work
on astrophysical systems involving these issues.

11
25. Ram Gopal Vishwakarma: Gravitational Effect of Pressure
and Dark Energy
One of the most novel aspects of the theory of general relativity (GR)
is its prediction that not only the energy density but the pressure of
matter also gravitates. This is a purely relativistic effect resulting from
the covariant character of the theory. However, this prediction has
never been tested in any experiment so far. Here we examine this is-
sue on the theoretical front and to our surprise, we find that the theory
seems to suffer from some fundamental inconsistencies. Especially, the
standard formulations of the energy-stress tensor seem to suffer from
paradoxes and inconsistencies in the presence of pressure. We recall
that the mysterious ‘dark energy’ (needed to explain the current cosmo-
logical observations) poses a serious confrontation between fundamental
physics and cosmology in view of its peculiar property- negative pres-
sure. This crisis may be an outcome of the (so far untested) prediction
of GR that the pressure of the matter source also gravitates.

Friday

26. Jim Isenberg: Initial Data for the Relativistic Graviational

N-Body Problem
In general relativity, an initial data set for an isolated gravitational
system takes the form of a solution of the Einstein constraint equations
which is asymptotically Euclidean on a specified end. Given a collec-
tion of N such data sets with a subregion of interest chosen in each, we
show how to construct a family of new initial data sets, each of which
contains isometric copies of each of the N chosen subregions, positioned
in a chosen array in a single asymptotic end. These composite initial
data sets model isolated, relativistic gravitational systems containing N
chosen bodies in specified initial configurations. This work has been in
collaboration with Piotr Chrusciel and Justin Corvino

27. Omar Eduardo Ortiz: On well-posedness, linear perturbations

and mass conservationfor axisymmetric Einstein equations
For axially symmetric solutions of Einstein equations there exists a
gauge which has the remarkable property that the total mass can be
written as a conserved, positive definite, integral on the spacelike slices.
The mass integral provides a nonlinear control of the variables along the
whole evolution. In this gauge, Einstein equations reduce to a coupled

12
 hyperbolic-elliptic system which is formally singular at the axis. As a
first step in analyzing this system of equations we study linear pertur-
bations on flat background. We prove that the linear equations reduce
to a very simple system of equations which provide, thought the mass
formula, useful insight into the structure of the full system. However,
the singular behavior of the coefficients at the axis makes the study of
this linear system difficult from the analytical point of view. In order to
understand the behavior of the solutions, we study the numerical evo-
lution of them. We provide strong numerical evidence that the system
is well-posed and that its solutions have the expected behavior. Finally,
this linear system allows us to formulate a model problem which is phys-
ically interesting in itself, since it is connected with the linear stability
of black hole solutions in axial symmetry. This model can contribute
significantly to solve the nonlinear problem and at the same time it ap-
pears to be tractable.

28. Florian Beyer: Theory of second-order hyperbolic Fuchsian

equations and applications to general relativity
We introduce a class of singular partial differential equations, the second-
order hyperbolic Fuchsian systems, and we investigate the associated
initial value problem when data are imposed on the singularity. For
the proposed class of second-order hyperbolic Fuchsian systems, we es-
tablish the existence of solutions with prescribed asymptotic behavior
on the singularity. Our proof is based on a new scheme which is also
suitable to design numerical approximations. Furthermore, we show
that the second-order Fuchsian framework is appropriate to handle Ein-
stein’s field equations for Gowdy symmetric spacetimes and allows us
to recover earlier results, while providing a direct approach leading to
accurate numerical solutions of the singular initial value problem. As
examples we construct Gowdy solutions numerically with incomplete
(i.e. non-compact) Cauchy horizons.

29. Juan Antonio Valiente Kroon: A rigidity property for asymp-

totically simple developments of time symmetric data
Given an analytic, time symmetric, asymptotically Euclidean initial
data set for the vacuum Einstein equations, we analyse the implica-
tions of its development being asymptotically simple. To this end we
consider a class of initial data which includes static solutions. It is
shown that the development of this data is smooth at the sets where

13
 null infinity touches spatial infinity if and only if the data is static in
a neighbourhood of infinity [1]. This result generalises a similar anal-
ysis for conformally flat data [2]. The present result brings further in
evidence the privileged role that asymptotically static data plays among
the class of time symmetric data with an asymptotically simple devel-
opments —as conjectured in e.g. [3,4]. The analysis makes extensive
use of the conformal field equations and of Friedrichś framework of the
cylinder at spatial infinity [5,6]. References [1] J A Valiente Kroon.
[2] J A Valiente Kroon. A rigidity property of of asymptotically simple
spacetimes arising from conformally flat data. Comm. Math. Phys.
(in press) [3] J A Valiente Kroon. A new class of obstructions to the
smoothness of null infinity. Comm. Math. Phys. 244, 133 (2004) [4] J
A Valiente Kroon. Does asymptotic simplicity allow for radiation near
spatial infinity? Comm. Math. Phys. 252, 211 (2004) [5] H Friedrich.
Gravitational fields near space-like and null infinity. J. Geom. Phys.
24, 83 (1998). [6] H Friedrich. Smoothness at null infinity and the
structure of initial data. In T̈he Einstein Equations and the large scale
behaviour of gravitational fields,̈ P T Chrusciel and H Friedrich eds,
Birkhauser (2004).

30. Andrés Aceña: Minimal data at a point for solutions to cer-

tain geometric systems
In this talk recent results in the characterization of solutions to cer-
tain geometrical system of equations in a three dimensional Rieman-
nian manifold will be presented. The system of equations has been
constructed as to include several physically interesting systems of equa-
tions, such as the stationary Einstein vacuum field equations or har-
monic maps coupled to gravity in three dimensions. A characterization
of its solutions in a neighbourhood of a given point through sequences
of symmetric trace free tensors is given and necessary and sufficient
conditions on the data for the existence of the solution are presented,
thus providing a complete characterization of all the solutions around
the given point.

31. Alberto Chamorro: Physical Content of the Principle of Gen-

eral Covariance
The issue of whether or not the Principle of General Covariance (GCP)
has physical content has been matter of debate and confusion since the
inception of General Relativity. In our view the physical meaning of co-

14
 ordinates is related to the question of the possible physical significance
of that principle. We believe that the latter may be taken as an appro-
priate generalized principle of relativity with physical content. With the
purpose of throwing light over the subject, after presenting our version
of the GCP, we define and construct quasi-Minkowskian coordinates as-
sociated to the word-line of an observer who transports an orthonormal
tetrad (QMCCR). We view the QMCCR as the coordinates that would
be obtained by that observer by applying operational protocols valid in
flat space-time to get the standard Lorentzian coordinates of an event.
The set of all the QMCCR is in general an infinite family all of whose
members collapse to the usual Lorentzian coordinates when the observer
is in free fall, his or her space triad does not rotate (R = 0) and the
curvature of space-time vanishes. This implements the idea that the
set of all the operational protocols which are equivalent -in the sense
of assigning the same numerical values- to obtain the Lorentzian co-
ordinates of events in flat space-time split into inequivalent subsets of
operational prescriptions under the presence of a gravitational field or
when the observer is not inertial. Something similar must happen with
all the physical quantities. Other considerations will be presented

32. Ernesto Fabian Eiroa: Recent progress in thin shell worm-

holes
In this talk, some recent advances in the geometrical construction of
thin shell wormholes are presented. Configurations with spherical and
cylindrical symmetry are both considered. The stability under perturba-
tions preserving the symmetry and the presence of matter violating the
energy conditions are discussed.

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Posters
1. Maria Florencia Parisi: Multigrid Numerical Simulation of
the Ricci Flow equation in S 3
In this work we develop a numerical method to evolve the Ricci Flow
equation in 3-dimensions in a spherical background geometry, which
uses a multigrid formulation where the computational domain (S 3 ) is
covered by 8 identical grids or patches. This allows both to study non
trivial topologies, as well as parallelize the computations, where each
patch is evolved separately by a processor.This brings the problem of
ensuring the proper transmission of data between grids, by means of
imposing suitable conditions at the interfaces without loosing precision
in the results. In order to achieve this, we obtained the SAT (stand-
ing for Simultaneous Approximation Term) or p̈enaltyöperators that
adequate to the formalism, and successfully implemented them in a nu-
merical code based on MPI. This work is an ongoing project, where the
mentioned numerical code is in a test and optimization stage. We do,
however, have some preliminary results that seem to point out its cor-
rect and stable operation, faithfully reproducing the expected behavior
of some known solutions.

2. Eoin Condron: Self-similar collapse of the self-interacting cylin-

drical scalar field
We investigate self-similar scalar field solutions to the Einstein equa-
tions in whole cylinder symmetry. Imposing self similarity on the space-
time gives rise to a set of single variable functions describing the metric.
Furthermore, it is shown that the scalar field is dependent on a single
unknown function of the same variable and that the scalar field poten-
tial has exponential form. The Einstein equations then appear as a set
of ODEs. We discuss the number of degrees of freedom at an arbitrary
point. Existence and uniqueness of solutions is discussed where initial
data is taken to be along the axis of symmetry. This is the first step in
addressing the question of cosmic censorship in this class of spacetimes.
This is based on joint work with Dr Brien Nolan.

3. Oscar Pablo Zandron: Path-integral quantization in topolog-

ically (2+1) massive supergravity theory. Diagrammatic to
one loop structure.
The path integral quantization for higher derivative Chern-Simons the-
ories in (2+1) topologically massive supergravity is treated. The di-
agrammatic to one loop and the Feynman rules are constructed and

16
 later on, the regularization and renormalization of this higher deriva-
tive model is analysed in the framework of the perturbation theory.

4. Alberto Carrasco Ferreira: A uniqueness theorem for static

quasi-local black holes
Marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTS) are widely considered as
good quasi-local replacements for black holes. In this work we investi-
gate sufficient conditions under which a static Killing initial data set
possessing a MOTS satisfies the hypotheses required for the classical
uniqueness theorems for black holes.

5. Néstor Ortiz: Conformal diagrams for the gravitational col-

lapse of a spherically symmetric dust cloud
We present an algorithm to construct conformal diagrams describing
the causal structure in the interior of a relativistic, collapsing matter
cloud in spherical symmetry. This algorithm is based on a careful study
of the light rays in the vicinity of the singularity and on the numerical
integration of radial null geodesics. We apply this technique to the col-
lapse of a spherical dust cloud, and analyze the local and global visibility
of the resulting singularity.

6. Cesar S. Lopez-Monsalvo: Relativistic thermal dynamics

In this work we present the covariant dynamics of a fully coupled two-
fluid system whose species are particles and entropy. This is a general-
ization of Carter’s original work (Carter, 1989), which on the grounds
of simplicity, ignored entrainment effects which are generic to most
multi-fluid systems. This is also an extension to general relativity of the
Newtonian work performed by Andersson and Comer. The key result of
the formalism is the relativistic generalization of the Maxwell-Cattaneo
equation, which governs the dynamics of heat. In this construction,
the relaxation time of temperature disturbances on a medium depends
crucially on the entrainment between matter and entropy and is fully
determined once the equation of state is set. Therefore no additional
parameters are needed, in contrast with previous results where the re-
laxation time has to be directly measured or obtained from relativistic
kinetic theory. We use the relativistic two-stream analysis to assess sta-
bility and to verify that the matter models one can propose are causally
well behaved. These requirements are verified directly on the master
function (Lagrangian density) or, equivalently, at the level of the equa-
tion of state one would like to use. We present a toy model equation of
state of matter and radiation slightly out-of-equilibrium to illustrate the
features and constraints which are imposed by our stability analysis.

17
7. Gabriel Abreu: Kodama time
In a general time-dependent (3+1)-dimensional spherically symmetric
spacetime, the so-called Kodama vector is a naturally defined geometric
quantity that is timelike outside the evolving horizon and so defines a
preferred class of fiducial observers. However the Kodama vector does
not by itself define any preferred notion of time. We demonstrate that
a preferred time coordinate - which we shall call Kodama time - can be
introduced by taking the additional step of applying the Clebsch decom-
position theorem to the Kodama vector. We thus construct a geomet-
rically preferred coordinate system for any time-dependent spherically
symmetric spacetime, and explore its properties. In particular we use
this formalism to construct a general class of conservation laws, gen-
eralizing Kodamaś energy flux. We study the geometrically preferred
fiducial observers, and demonstrate that it is possible to define and cal-
culate a generalized notion of surface gravity that is valid throughout
the e ntire evolving spacetime. Furthermore, by building and suitably
normalizing set of radial null geodesics, we can show that this general-
ized surface gravity passes several consistency tests and has a physically
appropriate static limit. http://arXiv.org/pdf/1004.1456v2

8. Jaykov Foukzon: Relativistic length expansion in general ac-

celerated system revisited
The aim of the present article is to give an exact and correct repre-
sentation of the essentially important part of modern special relativity
theory that touches upon the behavior of the proper length of acceler-
ated moving bodies. In particular we pointed out that standard solution
of the Bell’s problem [3]-[4]revision needed. Classical solution of the
relativistic length expansion in general accelerated system completely
revisited.Instant proper length measurement between J.S.Bell’s rockets
also is considered successfully.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0910/0910.2298.pdf

9. Xianghui Luo Luo: Power law inflation with electromagnetism

In the talk, I will talk about how we proved future global stability of
power law expanding cosmological models with perturbations that con-
tain electromagnetic field. Future global stability means the question
that given a background solution to Einstein equations coupled to some
matter fields, of which every causal geodesic is complete to the future,
whether a small perturbation results in a solution that also has this
property. In other words, whether the property that all freely falling
objects have infinite future is stable against small perturbations.

18
10. Emily Duffy: Cauchy Horizon Stability in the Self Similar
LTB Spacetime
We undertake a rigorous study of the linear stability of the Cauchy
horizon in the self-similar Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi spacetime. We use
a combination of energy methods and asymptotic analysis to analytically
determine the growth and asymptotic behaviour of the perturbations as
they evolve through the spacetime. We first show that the Lp norm, for
1
leqp <
inf ty of a particular average of the perturbation generically diverges
at the Cauchy horizon. We then use this to determine the asymptotic
behaviour of the perturbation as it evolves towards the Cauchy horizon
and discuss the implications for cosmic censorship. This is based on
joint work with Dr Brien Nolan.

11. Matteo Smerlak: Thermal time and the Tolman-Ehrenfest ef-

fect
The thermal time hypothesis has been introduced as a possible basis for
a fully general-relativistic thermodynamics. Here I use the notion of
thermal time to study thermal equilibrium on stationary spacetimes.
Notably, I show that the Tolman-Ehrenfest effect (the variation of tem-
√
perature in space so that T = g00 remains constant) can be reappraised
as a manifestation of this fact: at thermal equilibrium, temperature is
locally the rate of flow of thermal time with respect to proper time -
pictorially, ẗhe speed of (thermal) time.̈ This derivation of the Tolman-
Ehrenfest effect makes no reference to the physical mechanisms underly-
ing thermalization, thus illustrating the import of the notion of thermal
time. Joint work with Carlo Rovelli.

12. Marcos Ariel Ramirez: Splitting thin shells of counter rotat-

ing particles and their thick Einstein-Vlasov counterparts
In this work we study the dynamics of self gravitating spherically sym-
metric thin shells made of counter rotating particles. We consider all
possible velocity distributions for the particles, and show that the equa-
tions of motion by themselves do not constrain this distribution. We
therefore consider the dynamical stability of the resulting configurations
under several possible processes. This includes the stability of static
configurations as a whole, where we find a lower bound for the com-
pactness of the shell. We analyse also the stability of the single particle
orbits and find conditions for “single particle evaporation”. In the case
of a shell with particles whose angular momentums are restricted to two

19
 values, we consider the conditions for stability under splitting into two
separate shells. This analysis leads to the conclusion that under certain
conditions, which are given explicitly, an evolving shell may split into
two or more separate shells. We provide e xplicit examples to illustrate
this phenomenon. We also include a derivation of the thick to thin shell
limit for an Einstein shell that shows that the limiting distribution of
angular momentum is unique, covering continuously a finite range of
values. Finally we deal with Einstein-Vlasov systems which are static,
spherically symmetric and whose particles can only have a discrete set
of values for their angular momentum. We prove some general proper-
ties which hold for a wide class of these shells and compare with previous
results. We also develop a concrete family of shells and for these we
demonstrate the existence of a thin shell limit and show that this limit
is in accordance with the thin shells that we have analysed before.

13. Alejandro Gallardo Lozada: The Boundary Field Theory In-

duced by the Chern-Simons Theory
The Chern-Simons theory defined on a 3-dimensional manifold with
boundary is written as a 2-dimensional field theory defined only on the
boundary of the three-manifold. The resulting theory is, essentially, the
pull-back to the boundary of a symplectic structure defined on the space
of auxiliary fields in terms of which the connection one-form of the
Chern-Simons theory is expressed when solving the condition of van-
ishing curvature. The counting of the physical degrees of freedom living
in the boundary associated to the odel is performed using Diracś canoni-
cal analysis for the particular case of the gauge group SU(2). The result
is that the specific model has one physical local degree of freedom.

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