Asymptotics of spin-0 fields and conserved charges on n-dimensional Minkowski spaces

Abstract

We use conformal geometry methods and the construction of Friedrich's cylinder at spatial infinity to study the propagation of spin-0 fields (solutions to the wave equation) on n-dimensional Minkowski spacetimes in a neighbourhood of spatial and null infinity. We obtain formal solutions written in terms of series expansions close to spatial and null infinity and use them to compute non-trivial asymptotic spin-0 charges. It is shown that if one examines the most general initial data within the class considered in this paper, the expansion is polyhomogeneous and hence of restricted regularity at null infinity. Furthermore, we derive the conditions on the initial data needed to obtain well-defined limits for the asymptotic charges at the critical sets where null infinity and spatial infinity meet. In four dimensions, we find that there are infinitely many well-defined asymptotic charges at the critical sets, while for higher dimensions there is only a finite number of non-trivial asymptotic charges with well-defined limits at the critical sets.