Asymptotic properties of the electromagnetic field in the external Schwarzschild spacetime (Q5927938)

This paper is a rigorous mathematical analysis of the asymptotic behavior of the solutions to the vacuum Maxwell equations in the external Schwarzschild spacetime. The authors' analysis parallels the pioneering work of \textit{D. Christodolou} and \textit{S. Klainerman} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 43, 137-199 (1993; Zbl 0715.35076)] on the electromagnetic field and Weyl tensor field in Minkowski spacetime. To obtain the results in this case the authors use similar, but more complicated, geometric considerations as Schwarzschild spacetime does not have the conformal group as an isometry group and there are no conformal Killing vectors. This means that the authors are only able to obtain the complete asymptotic behavior along the null outgoing directions, with only partial results for the asymptotic behavior along timelike curves. In addition to geometric considerations the authors use generalized energy estimates in their proofs. In particular, their results are based on the construction of a family of generalized energy-type norms and on the control of their boundedness followed by Sobolev estimates to control the norms of the electromagnetic field. The authors find that null ingoing geodesics tend asymptotically to the boundary of the external Schwarzschild spacetime while the outgoing null geodesics starting from the boundary remain for a long time a small distance from it, the longer the nearer to the boundary the geodesic starts. So, unlike Minkowski spacetime, the asymptotic estimates in the null case are not uniform and there is only partial control of the non-uniformity. The authors also note that their techniques can be used to control the asymptotic behavior of the various derivatives of the Maxwell field and to obtain the asymptotic behavior of the Weyl tensor fields, the solutions to the spin 2 equations.