The red‐shift effect and radiation decay on black hole spacetimes

We consider solutions to the linear wave equation □_g? = 0 on a (maximally extended) Schwarzschild spacetime with parameter M > 0, evolving from sufficiently regular initial data prescribed on a complete Cauchy surface Σ, where the data are assumed only to decay suitably at spatial infinity. (In particular, the support of ? may contain the bifurcate event horizon.) It is shown that the energy flux F(??) of the solution (as measured by a strictly timelike T? that asymptotically matches the static Killing field) through arbitrary achronal subsets ?? of the black hole exterior region satisfies the bound F(??) ≤ C E(v + u), where v and u denote the infimum of the Eddington‐Finkelstein advanced and retarded time of ??, v₊ denotes max{1, v}, and u₊ denotes max{1, u}, where C is a constant depending only on the parameter M, and E depends on a suitable norm of the solution on the hypersurface t ? u + v = 1. (The bound applies in particular to subsets ?? of the event horizon or null infinity.) It is also shown that ? satisfies the pointwise decay estimate |?| ≤ C Ev in the entire exterior region, and the estimates |r?| ≤ C_R?E(1 + |u|)^?1/2 and |r^1/2?| ≤ C_R?Eu in the region {r ≥ R?} ∩ J⁺(Σ) for any R? > 2M. The estimates near the event horizon exploit an integral energy identity normalized to local observers. This estimate can be thought to quantify the celebrated red‐shift effect. The results in particular give an independent proof of the classical result |?| ≥ C E of Kay and Wald without recourse to the discrete isometries of spacetime. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.