The main aim of the work [161] is to establish self-similar solutions of the massive Einstein–Vlasov
system and the present result can be viewed as a first step to achieving this. In the set-up, two
simplifications are made. First, the authors study the massless case in order to find a scaling group,
which leaves the system invariant. More precisely, the massless system is invariant under the
scaling
The massless assumption seems not very restrictive since, if a singularity forms, the momenta will be large and therefore the influence of the rest mass of the particles will be negligible, so that asymptotically the solution can be self-similar also in the massive case, cf. [111], for the relativistic Vlasov–Poisson system. The second simplification is that the possible radial momenta are restricted to two values, which means that the density function is a distribution in this variable. Thus, the solutions can be thought of as intermediate between smooth solutions of the Einstein–Vlasov system and dust.
For this simplified system it turns out that the existence question of self-similar solutions can be reduced to that of the existence of a certain type of solution of a four-dimensional system of ordinary differential equations depending on two parameters. The proof is based on a shooting argument and involves relating the dynamics of solutions of the four-dimensional system to that of solutions of certain two- and three-dimensional systems obtained from it by limiting processes. The reason that an ODE system is obtained is due to the assumption on the radial momenta, and if regular initial data is considered, an ODE system is not sufficient and a system of partial differential equations results.
The self-similar solution obtained by Rendall and Velazquez has some interesting properties. The
solution is not asymptotically flat but there are ideas outlined in [161] of how this can be overcome. It
should be pointed out here that a similar problem occurs in the work by Christodoulou [59] for a scalar
field, where the naked singularity solutions are obtained by truncating self-similar data. The singularity of
the self-similar solution by Rendall and Velazquez is real in the sense that the Kretschmann scalar curvature
blows up. The asymptotic structure of the solution is striking in view of the conditional global existence
result in [12]. Indeed, the self similar solution is such that
, and
asymptotically, but
for any
,
for some
. In [12] global existence follows if
and if
for all
. It is also the case that if
is close to
, then global existence holds
in certain situations, cf. [20
]. Hence, the asymptotic structure of the self-similar solution has
properties, which have been shown to be difficult to treat in the search for a proof of global
existence.
http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-2011-4 |
Living Rev. Relativity 14, (2011), 4
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