| Abstract: | By means of the perturbation expansion scheme with respect to the gravitational constant we give a retarded solution of the covariant wave equation for the potential of a free massless scalar field in an axially symmetric gravitational background field of a point mass with a quadrupole moment. For the zeroth order solution we choose a spherical symmetric wave as an ansatz. Our results show that far from the source the spherical symmetric second order wave tail is effectively generated by the loss of mass, caused by gravitational radiation, and that all the other second order tail terms are compensable by first order multipole moments corresponding to a change of the boundary conditions. |
