Ill-posedness of the Cauchy problem for linearized gravity in a cavity with conformal boundary conditions

Abstract We consider Lorentzian general relativity in a cavity with a timelike boundary, with conformal boundary conditions and also a generalization of these boundary conditions. We focus on the linearized gravitational dynamics about the static empty cavity whose boundary has spherical spatial geometry. It has been recently shown that there exist dynamical instabilities, whose angular dependence is given in terms of spherical harmonics Y ℓ m , and whose coefficient of exponential growth in time goes as ∼ ℓ 1 / 3 . We use these modes to construct a sequence of solutions for which the initial data converge to zero as ℓ → ∞ but for which the solution itself does not converge to zero. This implies a lack of continuity of solutions on initial data, which shows that the initial value problem with these boundary conditions is not well-posed. This is in tension with recent mathematical work on well-posedness for such boundary conditions.