Warren Li (Princeton University)

The APDE seminar on Monday, 9/16, will be given by Warren Li (Princeton University) in-person in Evans 740, and will also be broadcasted online via Zoom from 4:10pm to 5:00pm PST. To participate, please email Federico Pasqualotto () or Mengxuan Yang ().

Title: BKL bounces outside homogeneity

Abstract: In the latter half of the 20th century, physicists Belinski, Khalatnikov and Lifshitz (BKL) proposed a general ansatz for solutions to the Einstein equations possessing a (spacelike) singularity. They suggest that, near the singularity, the evolution of the spacetime geometry at different spatial points decouples and is well-approximated by a system of autonomous nonlinear ODEs, and further that general orbits of these ODEs resemble a (chaotic) cascade of heteroclinic orbits called “BKL bounces”. In this talk, we present recent work verifying the validity of BKL’s heuristics in a large class of symmetric, but spatially inhomogeneous, spacetimes which exhibit (up to one) BKL bounce on causal curves reaching the singularity. In particular, we prove AVTD behavior (i.e. decoupling) even in the presence of inhomogeneous BKL bounces. The proof uses nonlinear ODE analysis coupled to hyperbolic energy estimates, and one hopes our methods may be applied more generally.

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