Logarithmic corrections in the asymptotic expansion for the radiation field along null infinity

Abstract

We obtain the second-order late-time asymptotics for the radiation field of solutions to the wave equation on spherically symmetric and asymptotically flat backgrounds including the Schwarzschild and sub-extremal Reissner–Nordström families of black hole spacetimes. These terms appear as logarithmic corrections to the leading-order asymptotic terms which were rigorously derived in our previous work. Such corrections have been heuristically and numerically derived in the physics literature in the case of a non-vanishing Newman–Penrose constant. In this case, our results provide a rigorous confirmation of the existence of these corrections. On the other hand, the precise logarithmic corrections for spherically symmetric compactly supported initial data (and hence, with a vanishing Newman–Penrose constant) explicitly obtained here appear to be new.