# A comment on gr-qc/9901053 11footnote 1Work supported by CONICOR, CONICET and Se.CyT, UNC

In eprint gr-qc/9901053 Gen Yoneda and Hisa-aki Shinkai have made several claims disputing our results in , and . We show here that these claims are not correct.

The authors begun mentioning three points by which they think our discussion of the topic is not clear, so we begin clarifying them, for this shall be useful in making our point on the correctness of our approach:

1.- On definitions of symmetric-hyperbolic systems: In the modern notation of pseudo-differential equations the definition of hyperbolicity is made in terms of the principal part of the symbol of the operator, where the symbol is obtained by replacing the occurrence of derivatives by $`ik_a`$, with $`k_a`$ a real co-vector, thus obtaining a matrix in the cotangent bundle of the base space. That is, $`P(u(x^j),\frac{}{x^i})p(u(x^j),k_i)`$ via $`\frac{}{x^i}ik_i`$. Incidentally, we do not comment, as stated by the authors at the end of the first section of Appendix C, the case of $`k_a`$ complex, we only comment the case of the norm of $`k_a`$, $`k:=q^{ab}k_ak_b`$, being complex, which is the case when the metric is complex, we always consider $`k_a`$ real.

Symmetric hyperbolicity requires the principal part of the symbol of a first order quasilinear system to be such that there exists a symmetric, positive definite bilinear form $`h=h(u)`$ such that $`h(u)p(u,k)+p(u,k)^{}h(u)=0`$, that is, anti-hermiticity of the symbol with respect to the scalar product defined by $`h`$.

So our definition is the standard one and is equivalent to the one used by the authors, so the results are the same, and the modification of the system to make it symmetric-hyperbolic adding terms proportional to the constraints are the same we performed in our first paper.

Contrary to what the authors assert in the last paragraph of page 2, symmetric hyperbolicity of a system implies the Cauchy problem for that systems is well posed, even for the quasilinear case. The proof of this fact is not new and appears in most modern textbooks in the theory of PDE’s.

2.- On reality conditions: It is clear from equation (2.38a) in  that if $`D_a`$ $`___\stackrel{~}{}`$N $`=0`$ then our modified system also preserves the triad reality condition, and there is no inconsistency. But what we claim is that our system does not need of the triad reality condition to be symmetric hyperbolic. This is important for the choice of foliation implied by the constancy of the densitized lapse is too restrictive for successful future applications in numerical simulations. The fact that the triad reality condition is not needed is explained in detail in our second paper, for there it is displayed in all details the scalar product (or what is equivalent $`h(u)`$) in which the symbol is anti-hermitian (and therefore symmetric-hyperbolic) with respect to. The matrix $`h(u)`$ is hermitian and positive definite by construction, this is a standard procedure in the theory of PDE’s from the point of view of pseudo-differential operators. We do not do what the authors claim we do in our work, which they call a “proposal”, namely to rotate the triad to anti-hermiticity and then use the equations for the rotated system. This is not needed. What we do is to find a “rotated” scalar product in which the system is symmetry-hyperbolic, that is to find a more general symmetrizer. What we do need is the metric reality conditions, for otherwise the “rotation” to anti-hermiticity of the triad can not be done. They are treated in detail in the second paper.

3.- The characteristic structure of the resulting system: This structure is not needed for asserting symmetric-hyperbolicity, so we did not include it in our first paper, for it was a letter, we did include it in our second paper, where we explicitly diagonalized the system, and where we also displayed the characteristic structure of the constraint evolution equations, since they might be useful for evolution, and since the eigenvectors structure is remarkable simple.

From the second point above, using standard definitions, and displaying explicitly the scalar product used for symmetric-hyperbolicity it is clear that our work is correct, furthermore the calculations in the work we are commenting are the same than those we have previously done.