  This is the main paper in a sequence in which we give a complete proof of the
bounded $L^2$ curvature conjecture. More precisely we show that the time of
existence of a classical solution to the Einstein-vacuum equations depends only
on the $L^2$-norm of the curvature and a lower bound on the volume radius of
the corresponding initial data set. We note that though the result is not
optimal with respect to the standard scaling of the Einstein equations, it is
nevertheless critical with respect to its causal geometry. Indeed, $L^2$ bounds
on the curvature is the minimum requirement necessary to obtain lower bounds on
the radius of injectivity of causal boundaries. We note also that, while the
first nontrivial improvements for well posedness for quasilinear hyperbolic
systems in spacetime dimensions greater than 1+1 (based on Strichartz
estimates) were obtained in [Ba-Ch1] [Ba-Ch2] [Ta1] [Ta2] [Kl-R1] and optimized
in [Kl-R2] [Sm-Ta], the result we present here is the first in which the full
structure of the quasilinear hyperbolic system, not just its principal part,
plays a crucial role. To achieve our goals we recast the Einstein vacuum
equations as a quasilinear $so(3,1)$-valued Yang-Mills theory and introduce a
Coulomb type gauge condition in which the equations exhibit a specific new type
of \textit{null structure} compatible with the quasilinear, covariant nature of
the equations. To prove the conjecture we formulate and establish bilinear and
trilinear estimates on rough backgrounds which allow us to make use of that
crucial structure. These require a careful construction and control of
parametrices including $L^2$ error bounds which is carried out in [Sz1]-[Sz4],
as well as a proof of sharp Strichartz estimates for the wave equation on a
rough background which is carried out in \cite{Sz5}.

Analysis of PDEs;General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology