Pointwise decay for the Maxwell field on black hole space-times (Q2012491)

For \((M,g)\) a uniformly smooth asymptotically flat Lorentzian spacetime satisfying certain additional conditions (in particular, regular or of black hole type, in the authors' terminology), consider a Maxwell field \(F\), i.e., an antisymmetric \((0,2)\)-tensor field such that \(dF=G_1\), \(d*F=G_2\). Here, the initial data \(F(0)\) are supposed to be smooth and compactly supported, and \(G_1\), \(G_2\) are supported in some forward cone and satisfy \(dG_1=dG_2=0\). The paper studies pointwise decay properties of solutions to the Maxwell system in this setup. Assuming uniform energy bounds and a weak form of local energy decay, the authors derive peeling estimates and show that the components of \(F\) have a decay rate of \(t^{-4}\) on compact regions. This is a precise analogue of Price's law, deriving sharp pointwise decay bounds from local energy decay.