A proof of Price's law for the collapse of a self-gravitating scalar field (Q2574963)

Price's law states that the decay rates for gravitational radiation flux through the event horizon and null infinity in gravitational collapse obey an inverse power law. Up to now it was based on physically motivated heuristics. In this fundamental work, the authors prove a precise upper bound formulation of Price's law for the collapse of a self-gravitating scalar field with spherically symmetric initial data (even in the presence of a gravitationally coupled Maxwell field). Thus the system they study is given by the Einstein-Maxwell real scalar field equations. The spherical symmetry of the initial data allows to effectively reduce the evolution to a system in two variables. The analysis of this system is based on new mathematical techniques exploiting the interaction between conformal geometry, the red-shift effect, and local energy conservation. The method of proof of the main result can moreover be applied to the linearized problem \(\square_g \phi = 0\) for \(g\) Schwarzschild or Reissner-Nordström. Finally, it is shown that the strong cosmic censorship conjecture (in Christodoulou's \(C^0\)-formulation) is false for the Einstein-Maxwell real scalar field system with initial data which are complete space-like asymptotically flat and spherically symmetric.