Abstract:
We prove a nonpolarized analogue of the asymptotic characterization of T<sup>2</sup>-symmetric Einstein flow solutions completed recently by LeFloch and Smulevici. We impose a far weaker condition, but obtain identical rates of decay for the normalized energy and associated quantities. We describe numerical simulations which indicate that there is a locally attractive set for T<sup>2</sup>-symmetric solutions not subject to this weakened condition. This local attractor is distinct from the local attractor in our main theorem, thereby indicating that the polarized asymptotics are unstable.