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Main Authors: Liu, Xiaoyi, Reall, Harvey S., Santos, Jorge E., Wiseman, Toby
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.20410
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author Liu, Xiaoyi
Reall, Harvey S.
Santos, Jorge E.
Wiseman, Toby
author_facet Liu, Xiaoyi
Reall, Harvey S.
Santos, Jorge E.
Wiseman, Toby
contents We consider Lorentzian General Relativity in a cavity with a timelike boundary, with conformal boundary conditions and also a generalization of these boundary conditions. We focus on the linearized gravitational dynamics about the static empty cavity whose boundary has spherical spatial geometry. It has been recently shown that there exist dynamical instabilities, whose angular dependence is given in terms of spherical harmonics $Y_{\ell m}$, and whose coefficient of exponential growth in time goes as $\sim \ell^{1/3}$. We use these modes to construct a sequence of solutions for which the initial data converge to zero as $\ell \rightarrow \infty$ but for which the solution itself does not converge to zero. This implies a lack of continuity of solutions on initial data, which shows that the initial value problem with these boundary conditions is not well-posed. This is in tension with recent mathematical work on well-posedness for such boundary conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_20410
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Ill-posedness of the Cauchy problem for linearized gravity in a cavity with conformal boundary conditions
Liu, Xiaoyi
Reall, Harvey S.
Santos, Jorge E.
Wiseman, Toby
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
We consider Lorentzian General Relativity in a cavity with a timelike boundary, with conformal boundary conditions and also a generalization of these boundary conditions. We focus on the linearized gravitational dynamics about the static empty cavity whose boundary has spherical spatial geometry. It has been recently shown that there exist dynamical instabilities, whose angular dependence is given in terms of spherical harmonics $Y_{\ell m}$, and whose coefficient of exponential growth in time goes as $\sim \ell^{1/3}$. We use these modes to construct a sequence of solutions for which the initial data converge to zero as $\ell \rightarrow \infty$ but for which the solution itself does not converge to zero. This implies a lack of continuity of solutions on initial data, which shows that the initial value problem with these boundary conditions is not well-posed. This is in tension with recent mathematical work on well-posedness for such boundary conditions.
title Ill-posedness of the Cauchy problem for linearized gravity in a cavity with conformal boundary conditions
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.20410