A proof of Price's Law on Schwarzschild black hole manifolds for all angular momenta

Abstract

Price's Law states that linear perturbations of a Schwarzschild black hole fall off as $t^{-2\ell-3}$ for $t \to \infty$ provided the initial data decay sufficiently fast at spatial infinity. Moreover, if the perturbations are initially static (i.e., their time derivative is zero), then the decay is predicted to be $t^{-2\ell-4}$. We give a proof of $t^{-2\ell-2}$ decay for general data in the form of weighted $L^1$ to $L^\infty$ bounds for solutions of the Regge--Wheeler equation. For initially static perturbations we obtain $t^{-2\ell-3}$. The proof is based on an integral representation of the solution which follows from self--adjoint spectral theory. We apply two different perturbative arguments in order to construct the corresponding spectral measure and the decay bounds are obtained by appropriate oscillatory integral estimates.