A scattering theory for linear waves on the interior of Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes

TL;DR

This paper develops a scattering theory for linear waves inside Reissner-Nordström black holes, establishing existence, uniqueness, and asymptotic completeness of scattering states, and analyzing their properties across horizons.

Contribution

It introduces a novel scattering framework connecting frequency and physical space pictures for waves in black hole interiors, including uniform boundedness of reflection and transmission coefficients.

Findings

Existence and uniqueness of scattering states proven.

Asymptotic completeness established for finite energy states.

Hilbert space isomorphism of Cauchy evolution between horizons.

Abstract

We develop a scattering theory for the linear wave equation $\Box_g \psi = 0$ on the interior of Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes, connecting the fixed frequency picture to the physical space picture. Our main result gives the existence, uniqueness and asymptotic completeness of finite energy scattering states. The past and future scattering states are represented as suitable traces of the solution $\psi$ on the bifurcate event and Cauchy horizons. The heart of the proof is to show that after separation of variables one has uniform boundedness of the reflection and transmission coefficients of the resulting radial o.d.e. over all frequencies $\omega$ and $\ell$. This is non-trivial because the natural $T$ conservation law is sign-indefinite in the black hole interior. In the physical space picture, our results imply that the Cauchy evolution from the event horizon to the Cauchy horizon is a Hilbert space isomorphism, where the past (resp. future) Hilbert space is defined by the finiteness of the degenerate $T$ energy fluxes on both components of the event (resp. Cauchy) horizon. Finally, we prove that, in contrast to the above, for a generic set of cosmological constants $\Lambda$, there is no analogous finite $T$ energy scattering theory for either the linear wave equation or the Klein-Gordon equation with conformal mass on the (anti-) de Sitter-Reissner-Nordstr\"om interior.