Quasinormal Modes from EFT of Black Hole Perturbations in Vector-Tensor Gravity

TL;DR

This paper investigates quasinormal modes of black holes within vector-tensor gravity using EFT, revealing potential gravitational wave signatures distinct from general relativity due to coupled tensor and vector perturbations.

Contribution

It derives the quadratic Lagrangian for odd-parity perturbations in vector-tensor gravity and analyzes the resulting quasinormal modes, highlighting how they differ from GR and can produce observable signatures.

Findings

QNMs scale simply from GR in stealth Schwarzschild backgrounds

Metric perturbation is a linear combination of two modes with different spectra

Potential gravitational wave signatures include characteristic modulations

Abstract

We study the dynamics of odd-parity perturbations on a static and spherically symmetric black hole background with a timelike vector field based on the effective field theory (EFT) approach. We derive the quadratic Lagrangian written in terms of two master variables, corresponding to the tensor and vector gravitons, which are coupled in general, while they can be decoupled on a stealth Schwarzschild(-de Sitter) background. For the stealth Schwarzschild background, we find that the quasinormal mode frequencies for both degrees of freedom are obtained from those in general relativity by simple scaling. Nonetheless, due to the fact that the metric perturbation is a non-trivial linear combination of the two degrees of freedom with different QNM spectra, the ringdown gravitational waves may exhibit characteristic modulation that can in principle be a signature of vector-tensor gravity.