Is Constant Mean Curvature a Good Choice of Time?

Jim Isenberg
University of Oregon

Friday, 23 May, 5 PM
Kidder 364, Oregon State University


While inertial time works in Minkowski spacetime, it fails in spacetimes with non trivial gravitational fields. It would be useful to find an alternative, geometrically and physically based, choice of times for cosmological spacetimes.Many advocate a choice of time based on constant mean curvature Cauchy hypersurfaces. We discuss results which indicate that this is a good choice, and others which indicate problems.