In this paper, we provide an elementary, unified treatment of two distinct blue-shift instabilities for the scalar wave equation on a fixed Kerr black hole background: the celebrated blue-shift at the Cauchy horizon (familiar from the strong cosmic censorship conjecture) and the time-reversed red-shift at the event horizon (relevant in classical scattering theory). Our first theorem concerns the latter and constructs solutions to the wave equation on Kerr spacetimes such that the radiation field along the future event horizon vanishes and the radiation field along future null infinity decays at an arbitrarily fast polynomial rate, yet, the local energy of the solution is infinite near any point on the future event horizon. Our second theorem constructs solutions to the wave equation on rotating Kerr spacetimes such that the radiation field along the past event horizon (extended into the black hole) vanishes and the radiation field along past null infinity decays at an arbitrarily fast polynomial rate, yet, the local energy of the solution is infinite near any point on the Cauchy horizon. The results make essential use of the scattering theory developed in Dafermos, Rodnianski and Shlapentokh-Rothman (A scattering theory for the wave equation on Kerr black hole exteriors (2014). arXiv:1412.8379) and exploit directly the time-translation invariance of the scattering map and the non-triviality of the transmission map.
This paper considers a trapped characteristic initial value problem for the spherically symmetric Einstein-Maxwell-scalar field equations. For an open set of initial data whose closure contains in particular Reissner-Nordstrdata, the future boundary of the maximal domain of development is found to be a light-like surface along which the curvature blows up, and yet the metric can be continuously extended beyond it. This result is related to the strong cosmic censorship conjecture of Roger Penrose. The principle of determinism in classical physics is expressed mathemat- ically by the uniqueness of solutions to the initial value problem for certain equations of evolution. Indeed, in the context of the Einstein equations of general relativity, where the unknown is the very structure of space and time, uniqueness is equivalent on a fundamental level to the validity of this principle. The question of uniqueness may thus be termed the issue of the predictability of the equation. The present paper explores the issue of predictability in general relativity. Since the work of Leray, it has been known that for the Einstein equations, contrary to common experience, uniqueness for the Cauchy problem in the large does not generally hold even within the class of smooth solutions. In other words, uniqueness may fail without any loss in regularity; such failure is thus a global phenomenon. The central question is whether this violation of predictability may occur in solutions representing actual physical processes. Physical phenomena and concepts related to the general theory of relativity, namely gravitational collapse, black holes, angular momentum, etc., must cer- tainly come into play in the study of this problem. Unfortunately, the math- ematical analysis of this exciting problem is very difficult, at present beyond reach for the vacuum Einstein equations in the physical dimension. Conse- Adapting and extending the techniques developed in recent work with Vasy for the study of the Cauchy horizon of cosmological spacetimes, we obtain boundedness, regularity and decay of linear scalar waves on subextremal Reissner-Nordstr "om and (slowly rotating) Kerr spacetimes, without any symmetry assumptions; in particular, we provide simple microlocal and scattering theoretic proofs of analogous results by Franzen. We show polynomial decay of linear waves relative to a Sobolev space of order slightly above @math . This complements the generic @math blow-up result of Luk and Oh. We consider a spherically symmetric, double characteristic initial value problem for the (real) Einstein-Maxwell-scalar field equations. On the initial outgoing characteristic, the data is assumed to satisfy the Price law decay widely believed to hold on an event horizon arising from the collapse of an asymptotically flat Cauchy surface. We establish that the heuristic mass inflation scenario put forth by Israel and Poisson is mathematically correct in the context of this initial value problem. In particular, the maximal future development has a future boundary over which the space-time is extendible as a C0 metric but along which the Hawking mass blows up identically; thus, the space-time is inextendible as a C1 metric. In view of recent results of the author in collaboration with I. Rodnianski, which rigorously establish the validity of Price's law as an upper bound for the decay of scalar field hair, the C0 extendibility result applies to the collapse of complete, asymptotically flat, spacelike initial data where the scalar field is compactly supported. This shows that under Christodoulou's C0 formulation, the strong cosmic censorship conjecture is false for this system. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Abstract We prove that a large class of smooth solutions ψ to the linear wave equation □ g ψ = 0 on subextremal rotating Kerr spacetimes which are regular and decaying along the event horizon become singular at the Cauchy horizon. More precisely, we show that assuming appropriate upper and lower bounds on the energy along the event horizon, the solution has infinite (non-degenerate) energy on any spacelike hypersurfaces intersecting the Cauchy horizon transversally. Extrapolating from known results in the Reissner–Nordstrom case, the assumed upper and lower bounds required for our theorem are conjectured to hold for solutions arising from generic smooth and compactly supported initial data on a Cauchy hypersurface. This result is motivated by the strong cosmic censorship conjecture in general relativity. 