Quasilinear reformulation of Lovelock gravity

Abstract

Here, we give an extended review of the quasilinear reformulation of the Lovelock gravitational field equations in harmonic gauge presented by Willison [Class. Quantum Grav.32 (2015) 022001]. This is important in order to establish rigorously well-posedness of the theory perturbed about certain backgrounds. The resulting system is not quasidiagonal, therefore analysis of causality is complicated in general. The conditions for the equations to be Leray hyperbolic are elucidated. The relevance to some recent results regarding the stability analysis of black holes is presented.