We prove in this paper the linear stability of the celebrated Schwarzschild family of black holes in general relativity: Solutions to the linearisation of the Einstein vacuum equations (“linearised gravity”) around a Schwarzschild metric arising from regular initial data remain globally bounded on the black hole exterior, and in fact decay to a linearised Kerr metric. We express the equations in a suitable double null gauge. To obtain decay, one must in fact add a residual pure gauge solution which we prove to be itself quantitatively controlled from initial data. Our result a fortiori includes decay statements for general solutions of the Teukolsky equation (satisfied by gauge-invariant null-decomposed curvature components). These latter statements are in fact deduced in the course of the proof by exploiting associated quantities shown to satisfy the Regge–Wheeler equation, for which appropriate decay can be obtained easily by adapting previous work on the linear scalar wave equation. The bounds on the rate of decay to linearised Kerr are inverse polynomial, suggesting that dispersion is sufficient to control the non-linearities of the Einstein equations in a potential future proof of non-linear stability. This paper is self-contained and includes a physical-space derivation of the equations of linearised gravity around Schwarzschild from the full non-linear Einstein vacuum equations expressed in a double null gauge.

We establish the full global non-linear stability of the Kerr–de Sitter family of black holes, as solutions of the initial value problem for the Einstein vacuum equations with positive cosmological constant, for small angular momenta, and without any symmetry assumptions on the initial data. We achieve this by extending the linear and non-linear analysis on black hole spacetimes described in a sequence of earlier papers by the authors: we develop a general framework which enables us to deal systematically with the diffeomorphism invariance of Einstein’s equations. In particular, the iteration scheme used to solve Einstein’s equations automatically finds the parameters of the Kerr–de Sitter black hole that the solution is asymptotic to, the exponentially decaying tail of the solution, and the gauge in which we are able to find the solution; the gauge here is a wave map/DeTurck type gauge, modified by source terms which are treated as unknowns, lying in a suitable finite-dimensional space.

Published in 1999, Christodoulou proved that the naked singularities of a self-gravitating scalar field are not stable in spherical symmetry and therefore the cosmic censorship conjecture is true in this context. The original proof is by contradiction and sharp estimates are obtained strictly depending on spherical symmetry. In this paper, appropriate a priori estimates for the solution are obtained. These estimates are more relaxed but sufficient for giving another robust argument in proving the instability, in particular not by contradiction. In a companion paper, we are able to prove certain instability theorems of the spherically symmetric naked singularities of a scalar field under gravitational perturbations without symmetries. The argument given in this paper plays a central role.

The internal space of a N = 4 supersymmetric model with WessZumino term has a connection with totally skew-symmetric torsion and holonomy in SP(<i>n</i>). We study the mathematical background of this type of connection. In particular, we relate it to classical Hermitian geometry, construct homogeneous as well as inhomogeneous examples, characterize it in terms of holomorphic data, develop its potential theory and reduction theory.

Let : (M1) (M2) be a bijection (not assumed affine nor continuous) between the sets of normal states of two quantum systems, modelled on the self-adjoint parts of von Neumann algebras M1 and M2, respectively. This paper concerns with the situation when preserves (or partially preserves) one of the following three notions of transition probability on the normal state spaces: the transition probability PU introduced by Uhlmann [Rep. Math. Phys. 9, 273-279 (1976)], the transition probability PR introduced by Raggio [Lett. Math. Phys. 6, 233-236 (1982)], and an asymmetric transition probability P0 (as introduced in this article). It is shown that the two systems are isomorphic, i.e., M1 and M2 are Jordan -isomorphic, if preserves all pairs with zero Uhlmann (respectively, Raggio or asymmetric) transition probability, in the sense that for any normal states and , we have P(),()=0 if and only if P(,