Flat limit of artificial cosmology for scalar waves in Schwarzschild-de Sitter
How do cosmological waveforms approximate waveforms from isolated systems for a small cosmological constant? This question is motivated by the observed small value of the cosmological constant, and also by Misner's idea to regulate the formally singular terms introduced into the Einstein equations by conformal compactification. We investigate this question quantitatively using scalar waves on Schwarzschild--de Sitter backgrounds. A suitable flat limit requires the foliation to remain regular at the future conformal boundary. We compare bridge foliations extending from the black hole horizon to the cosmological horizon with a regular asymptotically flat limit. Comparisons of cosmological and asymptotically flat waveforms on geometrically matched data show that the flat limit is numerically well behaved and recovers the essential features of the asymptotically flat waveform. We extend Misner's artificial cosmology by introducing a cosmological source that leaves the near-zone geometry unchanged and show that it improves agreement of the ringdown waveform but fails to capture the intermediate polynomial tail behavior accurately.