LOCAL DECAY OF WAVES ON ASYMPTOTICALLY FLAT STATIONARY SPACE-TIMES

In this article we study the pointwise decay properties of solutions to the wave equation on a class of stationary asymptotically flat backgrounds in three space dimensions. Under the assumption that uniform energy bounds and a weak form of local energy decay hold forward in time we establish a t(-3) local uniform decay rate for linear waves. This work was motivated by open problems concerning decay rates for linear waves on Schwarzschild and Kerr backgrounds. In the Schwarzschild case, such a decay rate has been heuristically derived by Price. Our results apply to both of these cases.