We set up the singular initial value problem for quasilinear hyperbolic Fuchsian systems of first order and establish an existence and uniqueness theory for this problem with smooth data and smooth coefficients (and with even lower regularity). We apply this theory in order to show the existence of smooth (generally not analytic) T 2 -symmetric solutions to the vacuum Einstein equations, which exhibit AVTD (asymptotically velocity term dominated) behavior in the neighborhood of their singularities and are polarized or half-polarized.

We establish existence and uniqueness results for the singular initial value problem associated with a class of quasilinear, symmetric hyperbolic, partial differential equations of Fuchsian type in several space dimensions. This is an extension of earlier work by the authors for the same problem in one space dimension.

International audienceWe establish the existence of smooth vacuum Gowdy solutions, which are asymptotically velocity term dominated (AVTD) and have T3 -spatial topology, in an infinite dimensional family of generalized wave gauges. These results show that the AVTD property, which has so far been known to hold for solutions in areal coordinates only, is stable to perturbations of the coordinate systems. Our proof is based on an analysis of the singular initial value problem for the Einstein vacuum equations in the generalized wave gauge formalism, and provides a framework which we anticipate to be useful for more general spacetimes

Axisymmetric and stationary solutions are constructed to the Einstein-Vlasov and VlasovPoisson systems. These solutions are constructed numerically, using finite element methods and a fixed-point iteration in which the total mass is fixed at each step. A variety of axisymmetric stationary solutions are exhibited, including solutions with toroidal, disk-like, spindle-like, and composite spatial density configurations, as are solutions with non-vanishing net angular momentum. In the case of toroidal solutions, we show for the first time, solutions of the Einstein-Vlasov system which contain ergoregions.