Small data global existence and decay for relativistic Chern-Simons equations (Q2364611)

The main results of the paper are global existence of a unique solution for small compactly supported initial data on \(\mathbb R^{1+2}\) (and sharp decay rate estimates) to the equations of relativistic Chern-Simons gauge theories coupled to a massive field of spin \(0\) (Higgs) or \(1/2\) (Dirac), with gauge groups whose Lie algebra admits a bi-invariant positive definite metric. The proof is uniform over a range of examples including well-studied self-dual Chern-Simons-Higgs (CSH) and Abelian Chern-Simons-Dirac (CSD) equations. However, global existence results for non-Abelian CSH, and even Abelian CSD, are first of a kind, as are the asymptotic decay estimates. The main difficulty in the proof is the long range effect of the conserved magnetic charge, which manifests in slow \((1/r)\) decay rate of the magnetic potential \(A\). However, the curvature \(F_A\) is compactly supported if the scalar multiplet field (section of a trivial vector bundle over \(\mathbb R^{1+2}\) on which the gauge group acts) is. To take advantage of this phenomenon the authors develop a gauge covariant formulation of the theories using exterior form calculus and Hodge duality with a suitable version of Klainerman's vector field method originally applied to the wave and Klein-Gordon equations. The method replaces commuting fields \(x_\mu\partial_\nu-x_\nu\partial_\mu\) with their covariant analogs. The latter exhibit anomalous commutation with the covariant Klein-Gordon operator, which leads to undesirable terms that do not decay in time \(t\). To address this issue the authors also need a gauge covariant version of the ODE technique previously used for similar purposes by Lindblad and others. The idea is to work with the equation for the scalar multiplet field \(\varphi\) directly, without performing commutations. It leads to a gauge covariant ODE for \(t\varphi\), which implies a \(t^{-1}\) decay rate for \(\varphi\) and allows to complete the proof.