Asymptotic Quasinormal Frequencies of Different Spin Fields in Spherically Symmetric Black Holes

We consider the asymptotic quasinormal frequencies of various spin fields in Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes. In the Schwarzschild case, the real part of the asymptotic frequency is ln3 for the spin 0 and the spin 2 fields, while for the spin 1/2, the spin 1, and the spin 3/2 fields it is zero. For the non-extreme charged black holes, the spin 3/2 Rarita-Schwinger field has the same asymptotic frequency as that of the integral spin fields. However, the asymptotic frequency of the Dirac field is different, and its real part is zero. For the extremal case, which is relevant to the supersymmetric consideration, all the spin fields have the same asymptotic frequency, the real part of which is zero. For the imaginary parts of the asymptotic frequencies, it is interesting to see that it has a universal spacing of $1/4M$ for all the spin fields in the single-horizon cases of the Schwarzschild and the extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes. The implications of these results to the universality of the asymptotic quasinormal frequencies are discussed.Comment: Revtex, 17 pages, 3 eps figures; one table, some remarks and references added to section I

Exact Gravitational Quasinormal Frequencies of Topological Black Holes

We compute the exact gravitational quasinormal frequencies for massless topological black holes in d-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. Using the gauge invariant formalism for gravitational perturbations derived by Kodama and Ishibashi, we show that in all cases the scalar, vector, and tensor modes can be reduced to a simple scalar field equation. This equation is exactly solvable in terms of hypergeometric functions, thus allowing an exact analytic determination of the gravitational quasinormal frequencies.Comment: 14 pages, Latex; v2 additional reference

Dynamical evolution of a scalar field coupling to Einstein's tensor in the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole spacetime

We study the dynamical evolution of a scalar field coupling to Einstein's tensor in the background of Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole. Our results show that the the coupling constant $\eta$ imprints in the wave dynamics of a scalar perturbation. In the weak coupling, we find that with the increase of the coupling constant $\eta$ the real parts of the fundamental quasinormal frequencies decrease and the absolute values of imaginary parts increase for fixed charge $q$ and multipole number $l$. In the strong coupling, we find that for $l\neq0$ the instability occurs when $\eta$ is larger than a certain threshold value $\eta_c$ which deceases with the multipole number $l$ and charge $q$. However, for the lowest $l=0$, we find that there does not exist such a threshold value and the scalar field always decays for arbitrary coupling constant.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Phys Rev

Quasinormal Modes of Kerr Black Holes in Four and Higher Dimensions

We analytically calculate to leading order the asymptotic form of quasinormal frequencies of Kerr black holes in four, five and seven dimensions. All the relevant quantities can be explicitly expressed in terms of elliptical integrals. In four dimensions, we confirm the results obtained by Keshest and Hod by comparing the analytic results to the numerical ones.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Quasinormal modes of black holes localized on the Randall-Sundrum 2-brane

We investigate conformal scalar, electromagnetic, and massless Dirac quasinormal modes of a brane-localized black hole. The background solution is the four-dimensional black hole on a 2-brane that has been constructed by Emparan, Horowitz, and Myers in the context of a lower dimensional version of the Randall-Sundrum model. The conformally transformed metric admits a Killing tensor, allowing us to obtain separable field equations. We find that the radial equations take the same form as in the four-dimensional "braneless" Schwarzschild black hole. The angular equations are, however, different from the standard ones, leading to a different prediction for quasinormal frequencies.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figures; references added, version to appear in PR

Perturbative calculation of quasi-normal modes of AdS Schwarzschild black holes

We calculate analytically quasi-normal modes of AdS Schwarzschild black holes including first-order corrections. We consider massive scalar, gravitational and electromagnetic perturbations. Our results are in good agreement with numerical calculations. In the case of electromagnetic perturbations, ours is the first calculation to provide an analytic expression for quasi-normal frequencies, because the effective potential vanishes at zeroth order. We show that the first-order correction is logarithmic.Comment: 20 pages incl. 8 figures (using eepic and color

The physical interpretation of the spectrum of black hole quasinormal modes

When a classical black hole is perturbed, its relaxation is governed by a set of quasinormal modes with complex frequencies \omega= \omega_R+i\omega_I. We show that this behavior is the same as that of a collection of damped harmonic oscillators whose real frequencies are (\omega_R^2+\omega_I^2)^{1/2}, rather than simply \omega_R. Since, for highly excited modes, \omega_I >> \omega_R, this observation changes drastically the physical understanding of the black hole spectrum, and forces a reexamination of various results in the literature. In particular, adapting a derivation by Hod, we find that the area of the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole is quantized in units \Delta A=8\pi\lpl^2, where \lpl is the Planck length (in contrast with the original result \Delta A=4\log(3) \lpl^2). The resulting area quantization does not suffer from a number of difficulties of the original proposal; in particular, it is an intrinsic property of the black hole, independent of the spin of the perturbation.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; v3: added references and comments. To appear in Phys. Rev. Let