Resonant Dynamics and the Instability of Anti-de Sitter Spacetime.

We consider spherically symmetric Einstein-massless-scalar field equations with a negative cosmological constant in five dimensions and analyze the evolution of small perturbations of anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime using the recently proposed resonant approximation. We show that for typical initial data the solution of the resonant system develops an oscillatory singularity in finite time. This result hints at a possible route to establishing the instability of AdS under arbitrarily small perturbations.

Globally regular instability of 3-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime.

We consider three-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) gravity minimally coupled to a massless scalar field and study numerically the evolution of small smooth circularly symmetric perturbations of the AdS3 spacetime. As in higher dimensions, for a large class of perturbations, we observe a turbulent cascade of energy to high frequencies which entails instability of AdS3. However, in contrast to higher dimensions, the cascade cannot be terminated by black hole formation because small perturbations have energy below the black hole threshold.

Weakly turbulent instability of anti-de Sitter spacetime.

We study the nonlinear evolution of a weakly perturbed anti-de Sitter (AdS) space by solving numerically the four-dimensional spherically symmetric Einstein-massless-scalar field equations with negative cosmological constant. Our results suggest that AdS space is unstable under arbitrarily small generic perturbations. We conjecture that this instability is triggered by a resonant mode mixing which gives rise to diffusion of energy from low to high frequencies.

Codimension-two critical behavior in vacuum gravitational collapse.

We consider the critical behavior at the threshold of black-hole formation for the five-dimensional vacuum Einstein equations satisfying the cohomogeneity-two triaxial Bianchi type-IX ansatz. Exploiting a discrete symmetry present in this model we predict the existence of a codimension-two attractor. This prediction is confirmed numerically and the codimension-two attractor is identified as a discretely self-similar solution with two unstable modes.

Nonlinear perturbations of the Kaluza-Klein monopole.

We consider the nonlinear stability of the Kaluza-Klein monopole viewed as the static solution of the five-dimensional vacuum Einstein equations. Using both numerical and analytical methods, we give evidence that the Kaluza-Klein monopole is asymptotically stable within the cohomogeneity-two biaxial Bianchi type-IX ansatz recently introduced by Bizoń, Chmaj, and Schmidt. We also show that for sufficiently large perturbations the Kaluza-Klein monopole loses stability and collapses to a Kaluza-Klein black hole.

Critical behavior in vacuum gravitational collapse in 4 + 1 dimensions.

We show that the (4 + 1)-dimensional vacuum Einstein equations admit gravitational waves with radial symmetry. The dynamical degrees of freedom correspond to deformations of the three-sphere orthogonal to the (t,r) plane. Gravitational collapse of such waves is studied numerically and shown to exhibit discretely self-similar type II critical behavior at the threshold of black hole formation.