Recently, a family of exact force-free electrodynamic (FFE) solutions was
given by Brennan, Gralla and Jacobson, which generalizes earlier solutions by
Michel, Menon and Dermer, and other authors. These solutions have been proposed
as useful models for describing the outer magnetosphere of conducting stars. As
with any exact analytical solution that aspires to describe actual physical
systems, it is vitally important that the solution possess the necessary
stability. In this paper, we show via fully nonlinear numerical simulations
that the aforementioned FFE solutions, despite being highly special in their
properties, are nonetheless stable under small perturbations. Through this
study, we also introduce a three-dimensional pseudospectral relativistic FFE
code that achieves exponential convergence for smooth test cases, as well as
two additional well-posed FFE evolution systems in the appendix that have
desirable mathematical properties. Furthermore, we provide an explicit analysis
that demonstrates how propagation along degenerate principal null directions of
the spacetime curvature tensor simplifies scattering, thereby providing an
intuitive understanding of why these exact solutions are tractable, i.e. why
they are not backscattered by spacetime curvature.Comment: 33 pages, 21 figures; V2 updated to match published versio