Conditionally extended validity of perturbation theory: Persistence of AdS stability islands

Approximating nonlinear dynamics with a truncated perturbative expansion may be accurate for a while, but it, in general, breaks down at a long time scale that is one over the small expansion parameter. There are interesting cases in which such breakdown does not happen. We provide a mathematically general and precise definition of those cases, in which we prove that the validity of truncated theory trivially extends to the long time scale. This enables us to utilize numerical results, which are only obtainable within finite times, to legitimately predict the dynamics when the expansion parameter goes to zero, and thus the long time scale goes to infinity. In particular, this shows that existing noncollapsing solutions in the AdS (in)stability problem persist to the zero-amplitude limit, opposing the conjecture by Dias, Horowitz, Marolf, and Santos that predicts a shrinkage to measure zero [O.J. Dias et al., Classical Quantum Gravity 29, 235019 (2012)]. We also point out why the persistence of collapsing solutions is harder to prove, and how the recent interesting progress by Bizon, Maliborski, and Rostoworowski has not yet proven this [P. Bizon, M. Maliborski, and A. Rostworowski, arXiv:1506.03519].