The Cauchy Problem in General Relativity

After a brief introduction to classical relativity, we describe how to solve the Cauchy problem in general relativity. In particular, we introduce the notion of gauge source functions and explain how they can be used in order to reduce the problem to that of solving a system of hyperbolic partial differential equations. We then go on to explain how the initial value problem is formulated for the so-called Einstein-Vlasov system and describe a recent future global non-linear stability result in this setting. In particular, this result applies to models of the universe which are consistent with observations.