On constraint preservation and strong hyperbolicity

Abstract

We use partial differential equations (PDEs) to describe physical systems. In general, these equations include evolution and constraint equations. One method used to find solutions to these equations is the free-evolution approach, which consists in obtaining the solutions of the entire system by solving only the evolution equations. Certainly, this is valid only when the chosen initial data satisfies the constraints and the constraints are preserved in the evolution. In this paper, we establish the sufficient conditions required for the PDEs of the system to guarantee the constraint preservation. This is achieved by considering quasi-linear first-order PDEs, assuming the sufficient condition and deriving strongly hyperbolic first-order partial differential evolution equations for the constraints. We show that, in general, these constraint evolution equations correspond to a family of equations parametrized by a set of free parameters. We also explain how these parameters fix the propagation velocities of the constraints. As application examples of this framework, we study the constraint conservation of the Maxwell electrodynamics and the wave equations in arbitrary space–times. We conclude that the constraint evolution equations are unique in the Maxwell case and a family in the wave equation case.