Abstract
We extend earlier numerical and analytical considerations of the conformally invariant wave equation on a Schwarzschild background from the case of spherically symmetric solutions, discussed in Frauendiener and Hennig (2017 Class. Quantum Grav. 34 045005), to the case of general, nonsymmetric solutions. A key element of our approach is the modern standard representation of spacelike infinity as a cylinder. With a decomposition into spherical harmonics, we reduce the four-dimensional wave equation to a family of two-dimensional equations. These equations can be used to study the behaviour at the cylinder, where the solutions turn out to have, in general, logarithmic singularities at infinitely many orders. We derive regularity conditions that may be imposed on the initial data, in order to avoid the first singular terms. We then demonstrate that the fully pseudospectral time evolution scheme can be applied to this problem leading to a highly accurate numerical reconstruction of the nonsymmetric solutions. We are particularly interested in the behaviour of the solutions at future null infinity, and we numerically show that the singularities spread to null infinity from the critical set, where the cylinder approaches null infinity. The observed numerical behaviour is consistent with similar logarithmic singularities found analytically on the critical set. Finally, we demonstrate that even solutions with singularities at low orders can be obtained with high accuracy by virtue of a coordinate transformation that converts solutions with logarithmic singularities into smooth solutions.