Construction of N-body initial data sets in general relativity

Abstract

Given a collection of N solutions of the (3+1) vacuum Einstein constraint equations which are asymptotically Euclidean, we show how to construct a new solution of the constraints which is itself asymptotically Euclidean, and which contains specified sub-regions of each of the N given solutions. This generalizes earlier work which handled the time-symmetric case, thus providing a construction of large classes of initial data for the many body problem in general relativity.