Princeton University Gravity Initiative Sping Seminar Series
On the Local Cauchy Problem in Effective Theories of Gravity
The group plans to meet in person in the PGI space (Jadwin, 4th floor), and lunch will be provided. The speaker will be remote.
Abstract: Effective field theory provides a way of parameterizing strong-field deviations from General Relativity that might be observable in the gravitational waves emitted in a black hole merger. To perform numerical simulations of black hole mergers in such theories it is necessary that the equations be written in a form that admits a well-posed initial value formulation. In the first part of my talk, I will focus on effective theories of gravity (beyond General Relativity) with second order equations of motion. I will discuss recent work (done in collaboration with Harvey Reall) on how a new class of "modified harmonic" gauges and gauge-fixing procedures can be used to obtain a local well-posedness result for such theories at weak coupling. Then in the second part, I will discuss work in progress on the extension of this result to theories whose equations of motion are higher than second order in derivatives.