Exceptional point and hysteresis in perturbations of Kerr black holes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the behavior of scalar perturbations in Kerr black holes, revealing an exceptional point where quasinormal modes coalesce, indicating a phase transition-like phenomenon with implications for black hole stability.

Contribution

It introduces an isomonodromic method to analyze perturbations, identifying a critical point where modes merge and demonstrating continuous mode evolution around this exceptional point.

Findings

Longest-living mode and overtone coincide at critical parameters

Modes change continuously around the degeneracy point

Evidence for a geometric phase near the exceptional point

Abstract

We employ the isomonodromic method to study linear scalar massive perturbations of Kerr black holes for generic scalar masses $M\mu$ and generic black hole spins $a/M$. We find that the longest-living quasinormal mode and the first overtone coincide for $(M\mu)_c \simeq 0.3704981$ and $(a/M)_c\simeq 0.9994660$. We also show that the longest-living mode and the first overtone change continuously into each other as we vary the parameters around the point of degeneracy, providing evidence for the existence of a geometric phase around an exceptional point. We interpret our findings through a thermodynamic analogy.