Possible discovery of a nonlinear tail and second-order quasinormal modes in black hole ringdown
Abstract
We investigate the nonlinear evolution of black hole ringdown in the framework of higher-order metric perturbation theory. By solving the initial-value problem of a simplified nonlinear field model analytically as well as numerically, we find that (i) second-order quasinormal modes (QNMs) are indeed excited at frequencies different from those of first-order QNMs, as predicted recently. We also find serendipitously that (ii) the evolution is dominated by a new type of power-law tail at late times. This “second-order power-law tail” decays more slowly than any late-time tails known in the first order (i.e., linear) perturbation theory, and is generated at the wave front of the first-order perturbation by an essentially nonlinear mechanism. These nonlinear components should be particularly significant for binary black hole coalescences, and could open a new precision science in gravitational-wave studies.
- Publication:
-
Physical Review D
- Pub Date:
- June 2008
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevD.77.124018
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0803.0501
- Bibcode:
- 2008PhRvD..77l4018O
- Keywords:
-
- 04.30.Tv;
- 04.25.Nx;
- 04.70.-s;
- Gravitational-wave astrophysics;
- Post-Newtonian approximation;
- perturbation theory;
- related approximations;
- Physics of black holes;
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 13 pages, 6 figures, typos corrected, to appear in Phys. Rev. D