Characteristic evolution of conformal scattering: I. Scalar Waves in Minkowski Spacetime

Abstract

We study the conformal scattering of massless scalar waves in Minkowski spacetime. The conformal scattering problem is formulated as a Goursat (characteristic initial-value) problem of the physical wave equation in compactified double-null coordinates, including the neighborhood of spatial infinity $i^0$. As null infinities $\mathcal{I}^\pm$ lie on the domain boundary by construction, asymptotic radiation is directly accessible. We consider three physical scenarios: free wave propagation, scattering off a P\"oschl--Teller (PT) potential, and the semi-linear $|\phi|^{n-1}\phi$ wave equation. For multipole numbers $\ell =0,1$, an explicit stencil, averaging along the spatial direction, yields globally second-order convergent results. For $\ell \ge 2$, an implicit stencil averaging along the temporal direction is required for numerical stability. Although the singular $i^0$ reduces the convergence of the radiation data on $\mathcal{I}^+$ to first order, Richardson extrapolation enhances the effective convergence rate to approximately $1.5$. For PT scattering, our method accurately computes scattering quantities, notably the phase shifts induced by the potential. In the semi-linear case, our method captures the physical signatures of a self-defocusing Kerr nonlinearity, including self-phase modulation and spectral broadening. The compactified double-null framework proves to be simple and efficient, suggesting a promising approach to the global evolution of conformal scattering.