Late-time dynamics of scalar fields on rotating black hole backgrounds

Motivated by results of recent analytic studies, we present a numerical investigation of the late-time dynamics of scalar test fields on Kerr backgrounds. We pay particular attention to the issue of mixing of different multipoles and their fall-off behavior at late times. Confining ourselves to the special case of axisymmetric modes with equatorial symmetry, we show that, in agreement with the results of previous work, the late-time behavior is dominated by the lowest allowed l-multipole. However the numerical results imply that, in general, the late-time falloff of the dominating multipole is different from that in the Schwarzschild case, and seems to be incompatible with a result of a recently published analytic study. [S0556-2821(99)50120-3].