PIMS Marsden Memorial Lecture: Richard Schoen

July 19, 2016 - July 19, 2016

Banff International Research Station (BIRS), Banff, Alberta, Canada

Topic: The Constraint Manifold of General Relativity Abstract: The global study of the space of solutions of the Einstein constraint equations goes back to work of Jerry Marsden and co-workers in the early 1970s. Since that time the subject has evolved in interesting ways. First it has been possible to localize the deformation theory in certain cases to deform solutions inside a chosen region without changing them outside. A second issue which arises in the deformation theory is a derivative loss problem which occurs when one attempts to place a manifold structure on the constraint space of solutions with a finite degree of differentiability. In this general lecture we will give an overview of these issues and developments.