Determination of Space-Time Structures from Gravitational Perturbations

Abstract

We study inverse problems for the Einstein equations with source fields in a general form. Under a microlocal linearization stability condition, we show that by generating small gravitational perturbations and measuring the responses near a freely falling observer, one can uniquely determine the background Lorentzian metric up to isometries in a region where the gravitational perturbations can travel to and return. We apply the result to two concrete examples when the source fields are scalar fields (i.e., Einstein–scalar field equations) and electromagnetic fields (i.e., Einstein-Maxwell equations). © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.