Princeton University Gravity Initiative Seminar

Abstract: Belinski, Khalatnikov and Lifschitz, or BKL for short, proposed heuristics saying that a generic (spacelike) singularity from the Einstein equations is silent (meaning different spatial points decouple near the singularity), oscillatory / chaotic, and unaffected by matter. In this talk, we discuss several contributions towards the rigorous mathematical justification of their heuristics, and in particular on why one can expect spatial decoupling even in the presence of nonlinear oscillatory behavior in time.