Exact Solutions of Covariant Wave Equations with a Multipole Source Term on Curved Spacetimes

A formalism is presented for calculating exactsolutions of covariant inhomogeneous scalar and tensorwave equations whose source terms are arbitrary ordermultipoles on a curved background spacetime. The developed formalism is based on the theory ofthe higher-order fundamental solutions for wave equationwhich are the distributions that satisfy theinhomogeneous wave equation with the corresponding order covariant derivatives of the Dirac deltafunction on the right-hand side. Like the classicalGreen's function for a scalar wave equation, thehigher-order fundamental solutions contain a direct termwhich has support on the light cone as well as a tailterm which has support inside the light cone. Knowinghow to compute the fundamental solutions of arbitraryorder, one can find exact multipole solutions of wave equations on curved spacetimes. Wepresent complete recurrent algorithms for calculatingthe arbitrary-order fundamental solutions and the exactmultipole solutions in a form convenient for practical computations. As an example we apply thealgorithm to a massless scalar wave field on aparticular Robertson-Walker spacetime.