Static self-gravitating elastic bodies in Einstein gravity

We prove that given a stress-free elastic body there exists, for sufficiently small values of the gravitational constant, a unique static solution of the Einstein equations coupled to the equations of relativistic elasticity. The solution constructed is a small deformation of the relaxed configuration. This result yields the first proof of existence of static solutions of the Einstein equations without symmetries.Comment: 29 pages. Updated to conform with published version, typos fixe

Lam\'e Parameter Estimation from Static Displacement Field Measurements in the Framework of Nonlinear Inverse Problems

We consider a problem of quantitative static elastography, the estimation of the Lam\'e parameters from internal displacement field data. This problem is formulated as a nonlinear operator equation. To solve this equation, we investigate the Landweber iteration both analytically and numerically. The main result of this paper is the verification of a nonlinearity condition in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space context. This condition guarantees convergence of iterative regularization methods. Furthermore, numerical examples for recovery of the Lam\'e parameters from displacement data simulating a static elastography experiment are presented.Comment: 29 page

Self-gravitating elastic bodies

Extended objects in GR are often modelled using distributional solutions of the Einstein equations with point-like sources, or as the limit of infinitesimally small "test" objects. In this note, I will consider models of finite self-gravitating extended objects, which make it possible to give a rigorous treatment of the initial value problem for (finite) extended objects.Comment: 16 pages. Based on a talk given at the 2013 WE-Heraeus seminar on "Equations of motion in relativistic gravity