On the branching of the quasinormal resonances of near-extremal Kerr black holes

TL;DR

This paper refutes previous claims by demonstrating that damped quasinormal modes of near-extremal Kerr black holes exist beyond a certain ratio of azimuthal to spheroidal harmonic indices, using analytical methods.

Contribution

It provides an analytical proof of the existence of damped quasinormal modes for near-extremal Kerr black holes in the previously claimed restricted regime.

Findings

Damped modes exist for >0.74, contrary to prior claims.

Analytical formula by Detweiler confirms the presence of these modes.

Damped modes are relevant for rapidly rotating black holes with a/M close to 1.

Abstract

It has recently been shown by Yang. et. al. [Phys. Rev. D {\bf 87}, 041502(R) (2013)] that rotating Kerr black holes are characterized by two distinct sets of quasinormal resonances. These two families of quasinormal resonances display qualitatively different asymptotic behaviors in the extremal ($a/M\to 1$) black-hole limit: The zero-damping modes (ZDMs) are characterized by relaxation times which tend to infinity in the extremal black-hole limit ($\Im\omega\to 0$ as $a/M\to 1$), whereas the damped modes (DMs) are characterized by non-zero damping rates ($\Im\omega\to$ finite-values as $a/M\to 1$). In this paper we refute the claim made by Yang et. al. that co-rotating DMs of near-extremal black holes are restricted to the limited range $0\leq \mu\lesssim\mu_{\text{c}}\approx 0.74$, where $\mu\equiv m/l$ is the dimensionless ratio between the azimuthal harmonic index $m$ and the spheroidal harmonic index $l$ of the perturbation mode. In particular, we use an analytical formula originally derived by Detweiler in order to prove the existence of DMs (damped quasinormal resonances which are characterized by finite $\Im\omega$ values in the $a/M\to 1$ limit) of near-extremal black holes in the $\mu>\mu_{\text{c}}$ regime, the regime which was claimed by Yang et. al. not to contain damped modes. We show that these co-rotating DMs (in the regime $\mu>\mu_{\text{c}}$) are expected to characterize the resonance spectra of rapidly-rotating (near-extremal) black holes with $a/M\gtrsim 1-10^{-9}$.