An integral equation for spacetime curvature in general relativity

Abstract

A key step in the proof of global existence for Yang-Mills fields, propagating in curved, 4-dimensional, globally hyperbolic, background spacetimes, was the derivation and reduction of an integral equation satisfied by the curvature of an arbitrary solution to the Yang-Mills field equations. This article presents the corresponding derivation of an integral equation satisfied by the curvature of a vacuum solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity. The resultant formula expresses the curvature at a point in terms of a ‘direct’ integral over the past light cone from that point, a so-called ‘tail’ integral over the interior of that cone and two additional integrals over a ball in the initial data hypersurface and over its boundary. The tail contribution and the integral over the ball in the initial data surface result from the breakdown of Huygens’ principle for waves propagating in a general curved, 4-dimensional spacetime. By an application of Stokes’ theorem and some integration by parts lemmas, however, one can re-express these ‘Huygens-violating’ contributions purely in terms of integrals over the cone itself and over the 2-dimensional intersection of that cone with the initial data surface. Furthermore, by exploiting a generalization of the parallel propagation, or Cronstrom, gauge condition used in the Yang-Mills arguments, one can explicitly express the frame fields and connection one-forms in terms of curvature. While global existence is certainly false for general relativity one anticipates that the resulting integral equation may prove useful in analyzing the propagation, focusing and (sometimes) blow up of curvature during the course of Einsteinian evolution and thereby shed light on the natural alternative conjecture to global existence, namely Penrose’s cosmic censorship conjecture.