The Helically-Reduced Wave Equation as a Symmetric-Positive System

Abstract

Motivated by the partial differential equations of mixed type that arise in the reduction of the Einstein equations by a helical Killing vector field, we consider a boundary value problem for the helically-reduced wave equation with an arbitrary source in 2+1 dimensional Minkowski spacetime. The reduced equation is a second-order partial differential equation which is elliptic inside a disk and hyperbolic outside the disk. We show that the reduced equation can be cast into symmetric-positive form. Using results from the theory of symmetric-positive differential equations, we show that this form of the helically-reduced wave equation admits unique, strong solutions for a class of boundary conditions which include Sommerfeld conditions at the outer boundary.