Global stability of Minkowski spacetime for a spin-1/2 field

TL;DR

This paper proves the global stability of Minkowski spacetime for a massless spin-1/2 field by analyzing the Einstein-Dirac system using vector-field methods, null form estimates, and specialized coordinate choices.

Contribution

It establishes the first stability result for Minkowski spacetime coupled with a massless Dirac field, including detailed estimates and handling of the Dirac equation in curved spacetime.

Findings

Proved stability of Minkowski spacetime with a massless Dirac field.

Established decay estimates for the Dirac field along the light cone.

Developed new estimates for the Dirac equation adapted to curved spacetime.

Abstract

We study the initial value problem of the Einstein-Dirac system, and show the stability of the Minkowski solution in the massless case with the use of generalized wave coordinates. This requires the understanding of the Dirac equation in curved spacetime, for which we establish various estimates. The proof is based on the vector-field method which is widely used in works on the stability of Minkowski problems for other Einstein-coupled systems. Under a specific choice of the tetrad, we show that components of the Dirac field satisfy a quasilinear wave equation, by resolving a potential loss of derivative problem. We also show that the semilinear nonlinearity of this equation behaves like a null form. In this way, we obtain the sharp decay of the field along the light cone. The structure of the energy-momentum tensor causes worse behavior of some components of the metric than the vaccum case, but an additional structure shows that there is no harm to the global existence result. In addition, we develop an estimate of the Dirac equation itself adpated to the decay of the metric, as this provides better estimates in the interior compared with the estimates from the second order equation. The combination of these estimates leads to a good control of the Dirac field that helps close the proof. We shall also see how our argument here gives a proof of the wellposedness of the system in the massive case.