Department Colloquium
Department of Mathematics
Princeton University
March 22nd, 2000
New solutions of the vacuum Einstein equations
This talk will give a brief introduction to the Cauchy problem for the vacuum Einstein equations. We will describe new constructions of Cauchy data which produce asymptotically flat solutions with particularly simple asymptotic behavior. For example, we will explain why solutions which are identical with a Kerr solution in a neighborhood of spatial infinity are dense in a natural topology on the space of initial data.