| Analysis Seminar | |
| Topic: | A Non-Isotropic Mechanism for the Formation of Trapped Surfaces |
| Speaker: | Sergiu Klainerman |
| Affiliation: | Princeton University |
| Date: | Tuesday, April 30 |
| Time/Room: | 3:00pm - 4:00pm/S-101 |
I present a new, fully anisotropic, criterion for formation of trapped surfaces in vacuum obtained in collaboration with J. Luk and I. Rodnianski. We provide conditions on null data, concentrated in a neighborhood of a short null geodesic segment (possibly flat everywhere else) whose future development contains a trapped surface. This extends considerably the previous result of Christodoulou which required instead a uniform condition along all null geodesic generators. To obtain our result we combine Christodoulou's mechanism for the formation of a trapped surface with a new deformation process which takes place along incoming null hypersurfaces.