On the stability of solutions of the Lichnerowicz–York equation

Abstract

We study the stability of solution branches for the Lichnerowicz-York equation at moment of time symmetry with constant unscaled energy density. We prove that the weakfield lower branch of solutions is stable whilst the upper branch of strong-field solutions is unstable. The existence of unstable solutions is interesting since a theorem by Sattinger proves that the sub-super solution monotone iteration method only gives stable solutions.