Princeton University Gravity Initiative Seminar

Abstract: We construct a family of asymptotically flat Cauchy data for the Einstein vacuum equations that contain no trapped surfaces, yet whose future development gives rise to multiple strongly causal independent trapped surfaces. In particular, spacetime contains several disjoint spacelike trapped regions that form within finite time, indicating the emergence of multiple spacelike black hole regions in the future development. The initial data are obtained by surgically modifying a vacuum geometrostatic manifold equipped with the Brill-Lindquist metric: the data agree exactly with the Brill-Lindquist metric outside a collection of balls centered at its multiple poles, and each ball is replaced by a constant-time slice of a well-prepared dynamical spacetime.