Paper detail

Scaling up the extrinsic curvature in asymptotically flat gravitational initial data: Generating trapped surfaces

The existence of the initial value constraints means that specifying initial data for the Einstein equations is non-trivial. The standard method of constructing initial data in the asymptotically flat case is to choose an asymptotically flat 3-metric and a transverse-tracefree (TT) tensor on it. One can find a conformal transformation that maps these data into solutions of the constraints. In particular, the TT tensor becomes the extrinsic curvature of the 3-slice. We wish to understand how the physical solution changes as the free data is changed. In this paper we investigate an especially simple change: we multiply the TT tensor by a large constant. One might assume that this corresponds to pumping up the extrinsic curvature in the physical initial data. Unexpectedly, we show that, while the conformal factor monotonically increases, the physical extrinsic curvature decreases. The increase in the conformal factor however means that the physical volume increases in such a way that the ADM mass become unboundedly large. In turn, the blow-up of the mass combined with the control we have on the extrinsic curvature allows us to show that trapped surfaces, i.e., surfaces that are simultaneously future and past trapped, appear in the physical initial data.