This monograph presents a self contained mathematical treatment of the initial value problem for shock wave solutions of the Einstein equations in General Relativity. It has a clearly outlined goal: proving a certain local existence theorem. Concluding remarks are added and commentary is provided throughout. The author is a well regarded expert in this area.

This monograph presents a self contained mathematical treatment of the initial value problem for shock wave solutions of the Einstein equations in General Relativity. It has a clearly outlined goal: proving a certain local existence theorem. Concluding remarks are added and commentary is provided throughout. The author is a well regarded expert in this area.

We show that the regularity of the gravitational metric tensor cannot be lifted from C(0,1) to C(1,1) by any C(1,1) coordinate transformation in a neighborhood of a point of shock wave interaction in General Relativity, without forcing the determinant of the metric tensor to vanish at the point of interaction. This is in contrast to Israel's Theorem which states that such coordinate transformations always exist in a neighborhood of a point on a smooth single shock surface. The results thus imply that points of shock wave interaction represent a new kind of singularity in spacetime, singularities that make perfectly good sense physically, that can form from the evolution of smooth initial data, but at which the spacetime is not locally Minkowskian under any coordinate transformation. In particular, at such singularities, delta function sources in the second derivatives of the gravitational metric tensor exist in all coordinate systems, but due to cancelation, the curvature tensor remains uniformly bounded.

This two-part volume represents the proceedings of the Fifth International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians, held at Tsinghua University, Beijing, in December 2010. The Congress brought together eminent Chinese and overseas mathematicians to discuss the latest developments in pure and applied mathematics. Included are 60 papers based on lectures given at the conference.

The Tenth International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation (GR10) was held from July 3 to July 8, 1983, in Padova, Italy. These Conferences take place every three years, under the auspices of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, with the purpose of assessing the current research in the field, critically discussing the prog ress made and disclosing the points of paramount im portance which deserve further investigations. The Conference was attended by about 750 scientists active in the various subfields in which the current research on gravitation and general relativity is ar ticulated, and more than 450 communications were sub mitted. In order to fully exploit this great occur rence of experience and creative capacity, and to pro mote individual contributions to the collective know ledge, the Conference was given a structure of work shops on the most active topics and of general sessions in which the Conference was addressed by invited speakers on general reviews or recent major advance ments of the field. The individual communications were collected in a two-volume publication made available to the participants upon their arrival and widely distributed to Scientific Institutions and Research Centres.