On the Existence of a Maximal Cauchy Development for the Einstein Equations - a Dezornification

Understand

In 1969, Choquet-Bruhat and Geroch established the existence of a unique maximal globally hyperbolic Cauchy development of given initial data for the Einstein equations.

• Their proof, however, has the unsatisfactory feature that it relies crucially on the axiom of choice in the form of Zorn's lemma.
• In this paper we present a proof that avoids the use of Zorn's lemma.
• In particular, we provide an explicit construction of this maximal globally hyperbolic development.