Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3P6
Université Libre de Bruxelles, C.P. 231 Campus Plaine U.L.B., Boulevard du Triomphe, 1050, Brussels, Belgium
Abstract:
The tail problem for the propagation of a scalar field is considered in a cosmological background, taking a Robertson-Walker spacetime as a specific example. The explicit radial dependence of the general solution of the Klein-Gordon equation with non-minimal coupling is derived, and the inapplicability of the standard calculation of the reflection and transmission coefficients to the study of scattering of waves by the cosmological curvature is discussed.