Wiggly tails: a gravitational wave signature of massive fields around black holes

Massive fields can exist in long-lived configurations around black holes. We examine how the gravitational wave signal of a perturbed black hole is affected by such `dirtiness' within linear theory. As a concrete example, we consider the gravitational radiation emitted by the infall of a massive scalar field into a Schwarzschild black hole. Whereas part of the scalar field is absorbed/scattered by the black hole and triggers gravitational wave emission, another part lingers in long-lived quasi-bound states. Solving numerically the Teukolsky master equation for gravitational perturbations coupled to the massive Klein-Gordon equation, we find a characteristic gravitational wave signal, composed by a quasi-normal ringing followed by a late time tail. In contrast to `clean' black holes, however, the late time tail contains small amplitude wiggles with the frequency of the dominating quasi-bound state. Additionally, an observer dependent beating pattern may also be seen. These features were already observed in fully non-linear studies; our analysis shows they are present at linear level, and, since it reduces to a 1+1 dimensional numerical problem, allows for cleaner numerical data. Moreover, we discuss the power law of the tail and that it only becomes universal sufficiently far away from the `dirty' black hole. The wiggly tails, by constrast, are a generic feature that may be used as a smoking gun for the presence of massive fields around black holes, either as a linear cloud or as fully non-linear hair.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

One dimensional description of the gravitational perturbation in a Kerr background

The perturbation equation in a Kerr background is written as a coupled system of one dimensional equations for the different modes in the time domain. Numerical simulations show that the dominant mode in the gravitational response is the one corresponding to the mode of the initial perturbation, allowing us to conjecture that the coupling among the modes has a weak influence in our system of equations. We conclude that by neglecting the coupling terms it can be obtained a one dimensional harmonic equation which indeed describes with good accuracy the gravitational response from the Kerr black hole with low spin, while only few couplings are necessary to describe a high spin one. This result may help to understand the structure of test fields in a Kerr background and even to generate accurate waveforms for various cases in an efficient manner.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure

Geodesic structure of a rotating regular black hole

We examine the dynamics of particles around a rotating regular black hole. In particular we focus on the effects of the characteristic length parameter of the spinning black hole on the motion of the particles by solving the equation of orbital motion. We have found that there is a fourth constant of motion that determines the dynamics of orbits out the equatorial plane similar as in the Kerr black hole. Through detailed analyses of the corresponding effective potentials for massive particles the possible orbits are numerically simulated. A comparison with the trajectories in a Kerr spacetime shows that the differences appear when the black holes rotate slowly for large values of the characteristic length parameter.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figure