Stability of Minkowski Space-time with a translation space-like Killing field

Abstract

In this paper we prove the nonlinear stability of Minkowski space-time with a translation Killing field. In the presence of such a symmetry, the 3 + 1 vacuum Einstein equations reduce to the 2 + 1 Einstein equations with a scalar field. We work in generalised wave coordinates. In this gauge Einstein equations can be written as a system of quasilinear quadratic wave equations. The main difficulty in this paper is due to the weaker decay of free solutions to the wave equation in 2 dimensions, compared to 3 dimensions. This weak decay seems to be a deterrent for proving a stability result in the usual wave coordinates. In this paper we construct a suitable generalized wave gauge in which our system has a "cubic weak null structure", which allows for the proof of global existence.