Linear Stability of Higher Dimensional Schwarzschild Spacetimes: Decay of Master Quantities

In this paper, we study solutions to the linearized vacuum Einstein equations centered at higher-dimensional Schwarzschild met- rics. We employ Hodge decomposition to split solutions into scalar, co-vector, and two-tensor pieces; the first two portions respectively cor- respond to the closed and co-closed, or polar and axial, solutions in the case of four spacetime dimensions, while the two-tensor portion is a new feature in the higher-dimensional setting. Rephrasing earlier work of Kodama-Ishibashi-Seto in the language of our Hodge decomposition, we produce decoupled gauge-invariant master quantities satisfying Regge- Wheeler type wave equations in each of the three portions. The scalar and co-vector quantities respectively generalize the Moncrief-Zerilli and Regge-Wheeler quantities found in the setting of four spacetime dimen- sions; beyond these quantities, we further discover a higher-dimensional analog of the Cunningham-Moncrief-Price quantity in the co-vector por- tion. In the analysis of the master quantities, we strengthen the mode stability result of Kodama-Ishibashi to a uniform boundedness estimate in all dimensions; further, we prove decay estimates in the case of six or fewer spacetime dimensions. Finally, we provide a rigorous argument that linearized solutions of low angular frequency are decomposable as a sum of pure gauge solution and linearized Myers-Perry solution, the lat- ter solutions generalizing the linearized Kerr solutions in four spacetime dimensions.