Tangent bundle formulation of a charged gas

We discuss the relativistic kinetic theory for a simple, collisionless, charged gas propagating on an arbitrary curved spacetime geometry. Our general relativistic treatment is formulated on the tangent bundle of the spacetime manifold and takes advantage of its rich geometric structure. In particular, we point out the existence of a natural metric on the tangent bundle and illustrate its role for the development of the relativistic kinetic theory. This metric, combined with the electromagnetic field of the spacetime, yields an appropriate symplectic form on the tangent bundle. The Liouville vector field arises as the Hamiltonian vector field of a natural Hamiltonian. The latter also defines natural energy surfaces, called mass shells, which turn out to be smooth Lorentzian submanifolds. A simple, collisionless, charged gas is described by a distribution function which is defined on the mass shell and satisfies the Liouville equation. Suitable fibre integrals of the distribution function define observable fields on the spacetime manifold, such as the current density and stress-energy tensor. Finally, the geometric setting of this work allows us to discuss the relationship between the symmetries of the electromagnetic field, those of the spacetime metric, and the symmetries of the distribution function. Taking advantage of these symmetries, we construct the most general solution of the Liouville equation an a Kerr-Newman black hole background.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, prepared for the proceedings of the Fifth Leopoldo Garc\'ia-Col\'in Mexican Meeting on Mathematical and Experimental Physics, Mexico, September 201

A minimization problem for the lapse and the initial-boundary value problem for Einstein's field equations

We discuss the initial-boundary value problem of General Relativity. Previous considerations for a toy model problem in electrodynamics motivate the introduction of a variational principle for the lapse with several attractive properties. In particular, it is argued that the resulting elliptic gauge condition for the lapse together with a suitable condition for the shift and constraint-preserving boundary conditions controlling the Weyl scalar Psi_0 are expected to yield a well posed initial-boundary value problem for metric formulations of Einstein's field equations which are commonly used in numerical relativity. To present a simple and explicit example we consider the 3+1 decomposition introduced by York of the field equations on a cubic domain with two periodic directions and prove in the weak field limit that our gauge condition for the lapse and our boundary conditions lead to a well posed problem. The method discussed here is quite general and should also yield well posed problems for different ways of writing the evolution equations, including first order symmetric hyperbolic or mixed first-order second-order formulations. Well posed initial-boundary value formulations for the linearization about arbitrary stationary configurations will be presented elsewhere.Comment: 34 pages, no figure