2008/12/31 by Piotr Bizoń, Tadeusz Chmaj, Andrzej Rostworowski
Physics and Astronomy · #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/26/17/175006
published as Class.Quant.Grav.26:175006,2009 · 10 pages, 6 figures, one reference added, updated to conform with published version
arxiv created 2009/08/11 · openalex publication_date 2009/08/12 · arxiv updated 2010/05/12 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We discuss the nonlinear origin of the power-law tail in the long-time evolution of a spherically symmetric self-gravitating massless scalar field in even-dimensional spacetimes. Using the third-order perturbation method, we derive explicit expressions for the tail (the decay rate and the amplitude) for solutions starting from small initial data, and we verify this prediction via numerical integration of the Einstein-scalar field equations in four and six dimensions. Our results show that the coincidence of decay rates of linear and nonlinear tails in four dimensions (which has misguided some tail hunters in the past) is in a sense accidental and does not hold in higher dimensions.