Asymptotic behavior of null geodesics near future null infinity. III. Photons towards inward directions

TL;DR

This paper establishes new criteria under which photons emitted near future null infinity in asymptotically flat spacetimes, including inward directions, reach null infinity, extending previous results and connecting to maximal luminosity conjectures.

Contribution

It improves previous conditions for photon reachability at null infinity by including inward emissions and provides results applicable in higher dimensions without additional assumptions.

Findings

Photons with small initial |dr/du| reach null infinity in four dimensions.

In higher dimensions, photons with dr/du > -0.423 reach null infinity.

The criteria relate to asymptotic metric properties and maximal luminosity conjecture.

Abstract

A new sufficient condition for photons emitted near future null infinity to reach future null infinity is derived by studying null geodesics in the Bondi coordinates in asymptotically flat spacetimes. In our previous works [arXiv:2106.03150, arXiv:2110.10917], such a condition was established for photons emitted in outward or tangential directions to constant radial surfaces. This paper improves our previous result by including photons emitted in inward directions. In four dimensions, imposing the same assumptions on the metric functions as previously, we prove that photons reach future null infinity if their initial values of $|dr/du|$ are smaller than a certain quantity, where $r$ and $u$ are the radial and retarded time coordinates, respectively. This quantity is determined by the asymptotic properties of the metric and is connected to the conjectured maximal luminosity. In higher dimensions, photons emitted with $dr/du>-(1-1/\sqrt{3})\approx -0.423$ are shown to reach future null infinity without the assumptions on the metric functions.