Scattering by a long-range potential

Abstract

The phenomenon of wave tails has attracted much attention over the years from both physicists and mathematicians. However, our understanding of this fascinating phenomenon is not complete yet. In particular, most former studies of the tail phenomenon have focused on scattering potentials which approach zero asymptotically (x → ∞) faster than x ⁻². It is well-known that for these (rapidly decaying) scattering potentials the late-time tails are determined by the first Born approximation and are therefore linear in the amplitudes of the scattering potentials (there are, however, some exceptional cases in which the first Born approximation vanishes and one has to consider higher orders of the scattering problem). In the present study we analyze in detail the late-time dynamics of the Klein-Gordon wave equation with a (slowly decaying) Coulomb-like scattering potential: V (x → ∞) = α/x. In particular, we write down an explicit solution (that is, an exact analytic solution which is not based on the first Born approximation) for this scattering problem. It is found that the asymptotic (t → ∞) late-time behavior of the fields depends non-linearly on the amplitude α of the scattering potential. This non-linear dependence on the amplitude of the scattering potential reflects the fact that the late-time dynamics associated with this slowly decaying scattering potential is dominated by multiple scattering from asymptotically far regions.