Todd Oliynyk: Localised Big Bang Stability

Speaker
Todd Oliynyk, Monash University

Abstract
In this talk, I present a new proof, in four spacetime dimensions, of the nonlinear stability of the Kasner–scalar field family of spacetimes in the contracting direction over the entire range of sub-critical Kasner exponents. The proof is based on a conformal tetrad formulation of the Einstein–scalar field equations, using the scalar field as a time coordinate. A key advantage of this formulation is that the gauge reduced equations are purely hyperbolic. This allows us to prove that the Kasner-scalar field spacetimes are, in fact, locally stable.