Talk page

Title:
Relating relativistic point sources to continuous matter distributions

Speaker:
Iva Stavrov

Abstract:
Due to linearity of the Poisson equation one can describe a Newtonian gravitational point source as a limit of continuous matter distributions, and vice versa: one can view a continuous matter distribution as a limit of a sequence of point source configurations. In general relativity this idea is much more difficult to implement because the Einstein equations are non-linear. In this talk we present a mathematically rigorous way of executing these ideas at the level of time-symmetric initial data. The key is to pay special attention to (self-)interaction energies of point sources and to use intrinsic flat limit developed by Sormani and Wenger. This work is a collaboration with Noah Benjamin and Tatyana Benko.

Link:
http://scgp.stonybrook.edu/video_portal/video.php?id=3572

Workshop:
Simons- Workshop: Mass in General Relativity