A sharp counterexample to local existence of low regularity solutions to Einstein's equations in wave coordinates

Abstract

We are concerned with how regular initial data have to be to ensure local existence for Einstein's equations in wave coordinates. Klainerman-Rodnianski and Smith-Tataru showed that there in general is local existence for data in Sobolev spaces H^s with regularity s>2. We give an example of data in Sobolev spaces with regularity s=2 for which there is no local solution in this space.