arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Piotr Bizoń.
This is a short account of recent joint work with T. Chmaj and A. Rostworowski on asymptotic behavior of linear and nonlinear waves, as presented at the conference devoted to Myron Mathisson held at the Banach Center, Warsaw 2007.
We derive the exact late-time asymptotics for small spherically symmetric solutions of nonlinear wave equations with a potential. The dominant tail is shown to result from the competition between linear and nonlinear effects.
We consider the late-time tails of spherical waves propagating on even-dimensional Minkowski spacetime under the influence of a long range radial potential. We show that in six and higher even dimensions there exist exceptional potentials for which the tail has an anomalously small amplitude and fast decay. Along the way we clarify and amend some confounding arguments and statements in the literature of the subject.
We study the asymptotic behavior of spherically symmetric solutions in the Skyrme model. We show that the relaxation to the degree-one soliton (called the Skyrmion) has a universal form of a superposition of two effects: exponentially damped oscillations (the quasinormal ringing) and a power law decay (the tail). The quasinormal ringing, which dominates the dynamics for intermediate times, is a linear resonance effect. In contrast, the polynomial tail, which becomes uncovered at late times, is shown to be a \emph{nonlinear} phenomenon.
We study the late-time behavior of spherically symmetric solutions of the Yang-Mills equations on Minkowski and Schwarzschild backgrounds. Using nonlinear perturbation theory we show in both cases that solutions having smooth compactly supported initial data posses tails which decay as $t^{-4}$ at timelike infinity. Moreover, for small initial data on Minkowski background we derive the third-order formula for the amplitude of the tail and confirm numerically its accuracy.
We consider the critical behavior at the threshold of black hole formation for the five dimensional vacuum Einstein equations satisfying the cohomogeneity-two triaxial Bianchi IX ansatz. Exploiting a discrete symmetry present in this model we predict the existence of a codimension-two attractor. This prediction is confirmed numerically and the codimension-two attractor is identified as a discretely self-similar solution with two unstable modes.
It is fair to say that our current mathematical understanding of the dynamics of gravitational collapse to a black hole is limited to the spherically symmetric situation and, in fact, even in this case much remains to be learned. The reason is that Einstein's equations become tractable only if they are reduced to a 1+1 dimensional system of partial differential equations. Due to this technical obstacle, very little is known about the collapse of pure gravitational waves because by Birkhoff's theorem there is no spherical collapse in vacuum. In this essay we describe a new cohomogeneity-two symmetry reduction of the vacuum Einstein equations in five and higher odd dimensions which evades Birkhoff's theorem and admits time dependent asymptotically flat solutions. We argue that this model provides an attractive 1+1 dimensional geometric setting for investigating the dynamics of gravitational collapse in vacuum.
We consider the nonlinear stability of the Kaluza-Klein monopole viewed as the static solution of the five dimensional vacuum Einstein equations. Using both numerical and analytical methods we give evidence that the Kaluza-Klein monopole is asymptotically stable within the cohomogeneity-two biaxial Bianchi IX ansatz recently introduced in \cite{bcs}. We also show that for sufficiently large perturbations the Kaluza-Klein monopole loses stability and collapses to a Kaluza-Klein black hole. The relevance of our results for the stability of BPS states in M/String theory is briefly discussed.
We show that the 4+1 dimensional vacuum Einstein equations admit gravitational waves with radial symmetry. The dynamical degrees of freedom correspond to deformations of the three-sphere orthogonal to the $(t,r)$ plane. Gravitational collapse of such waves is studied numerically and shown to exhibit discretely self-similar Type II critical behavior at the threshold of black hole formation.
We consider the problem of asymptotic stability of a self-similar attractor for a simple semilinear radial wave equation which arises in the study of the Yang-Mills equations in 5+1 dimensions. Our analysis consists of two steps. In the first step we determine the spectrum of linearized perturbations about the attractor using a method of continued fractions. In the second step we demonstrate numerically that the resulting eigensystem provides an accurate description of the dynamics of convergence towards the attractor.
We discuss an eigenvalue problem which arises in the studies of asymptotic stability of a self-similar attractor in the sigma model. This problem is rather unusual from the viewpoint of the spectral theory of linear operators and requires special methods to solve it. One of such methods based on continued fractions is presented in detail and applied to determine the eigenvalues.
We show that the gravitating static soliton in the 2+1 dimensional O(3) $σ$ model does not exist in the presence of a negative cosmological constant.
In this paper we report on numerical studies of formation of singularities for the semilinear wave equations with a focusing power nonlinearity $u_{tt} - Δu = u^{p}$ in three space dimensions. We show that for generic large initial data that lead to singularities, the spatial pattern of blowup can be described in terms of linearized perturbations about the fundamental self-similar (homogeneous in space) solution. We consider also non-generic initial data which are fine-tuned to the threshold for blowup and identify critical solutions that separate blowup from dispersal for some values of the exponent $p$.
This is a survey of recent studies of singularity formation in solutions of spherically symmetric Yang-Mills equations in higher dimensions. The main attention is focused on five space dimensions because this case exhibits interesting similarities with Einstein's equations in the physical dimension, in particular the dynamics at the threshold of singularity formation shares many features (such as universality, self-similarity, and scaling) with critical phenomena in gravitational collapse. The borderline case of four space dimensions is also analyzed and the formation of singularities is shown to be intimately tied to the existence of the instanton solution.
In this paper we report on numerical studies of the Cauchy problem for equivariant wave maps from 2+1 dimensional Minkowski spacetime into the two-sphere. Our results provide strong evidence for the conjecture that large energy initial data develop singularities in finite time and that singularity formation has the universal form of adiabatic shrinking of the degree-one harmonic map from $\mathbb{R}^2$ into $S^2$.
We investigate spherically symmetric continuously self-similar (CSS) solutions in the SU(2) sigma model coupled to gravity. Using mixed numerical and analytical methods, we provide evidence for the existence (for small coupling) of a countable family of regular CSS solutions. This fact is argued to have important implications for the ongoing studies of black hole formation in the model.
We prove existence of a countable family of spherically symmetric self-similar wave maps from 3+1 Minkowski spacetime into the 3-sphere. These maps can be viewed as excitations of the ground state wave map found previously by Shatah. The first excitation is particularly interesting in the context of the Cauchy problem since it plays the role of a critical solution sitting at the threshold of singularity formation. We analyze the linear stability of our wave maps and show that the number of unstable modes about a given map is equal to its excitation index. Finally, we formulate a condition under which these results can be generalized to higher dimensions.
We study first order phase transitions in the gravitational collapse of spherically symmetric skyrmions. Static sphaleron solutions are shown to play the role of critical solutions separating black-hole spacetimes from no-black-hole spacetimes. In particular, we find a new type of first order phase transition where subcritical data do not disperse but evolve towards a static regular stable solution. We also demonstrate explicitly that the near-critical solutions depart from the intermediate asymptotic regime along the unstable manifold of the critical solution.