Local Existence of Solutions of Self Gravitating Relativistic Perfect Fluids

Abstract

This paper deals with the evolution of the Einstein gravitational fields which are coupled to a perfect fluid. We consider the Einstein–Euler system in asymptotically flat spacestimes and therefore use the condition that the energy density might vanish or tend to zero at infinity, and that the pressure is a fractional power of the energy density. In this setting we prove local in time existence, uniqueness and well-posedness of classical solutions. The zero order term of our system contains an expression which might not be a C ∞ function and therefore causes an additional technical difficulty. In order to achieve our goals we use a certain type of weighted Sobolev space of fractional order. In Brauer and Karp (J Diff Eqs 251:1428–1446, 2011) we constructed an initial data set for these of systems in the same type of weighted Sobolev spaces. We obtain the same lower bound for the regularity as Hughes et al. (Arch Ratl Mech Anal 63(3):273–294, 1977) got for the vacuum Einstein equations. However, due to the presence of an equation of state with fractional power, the regularity is bounded from above.