The Scattering Map on Oppenheimer--Snyder Spacetime

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the boundedness of solutions $\phi$ of the wave equation in the Oppenheimer--Snyder model of gravitational collapse in both the case of a reflective dust cloud and a permeating dust cloud. We then proceed to define the scattering map on this space-time, and look at the implications of our boundedness results on this scattering map. Specifically, it is shown that the energy of $\phi$ remains uniformly bounded going forward in time and going backwards in time for both the reflective and the permeating cases, and it is then shown that the scattering map is bounded going forwards, but not backwards, and is therefore not surjective onto the space of finite energy on $\mathcal{I}^+\cup\mathcal{H}^+$. Thus there does not exist a backwards scattering map from finite energy radiation fields on $\mathcal{I}^+\cup\mathcal{H}^+$ to finite energy radiation fields on $\mathcal{I}^-$. We will then contrast this with the situation for scattering in pure Schwarzschild.