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

© 2015, Springer Basel. 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.