{
  "abstract": "It has been proposed that consistency limits how slowly black holes can ring down in extensions of General Relativity: effective-field-theory (EFT) corrections may lengthen the decay time of a quasinormal mode by at most about one oscillation period, $\\Re[ω_{\\rm GR}]\\,δτ\\lesssim1$. We argue that, under standard power counting, this condition yields no new, model-independent constraint on gravitational EFTs. First, its motivation does not extend straightforwardly to black holes: the inverse oscillation frequency is not a universal, detector-independent uncertainty in the damping time of a classical waveform. Our main argument, however, rests on eikonal power counting alone. The decay-time shift grows with the angular momentum $\\ell$ of the mode, but so does the weight of higher-derivative operators. When curvature and derivatives are controlled by a single scale $Λ$, as in every known ultraviolet completion, the EFT around a black hole of radius $r_s$ remains predictive up to $\\ell\\sim(r_sΛ)^2$, and the shift becomes of order one only there, where an infinite tower of operators contributes at the same order. A resolvable shift within the predictive regime requires either large numerical coefficients or a two-scale power counting, which has no known ultraviolet completion. In both cases the quartic-curvature operators dominate, and the condition coincides parametrically with the positivity bounds that flat-space graviton amplitudes impose under standard assumptions on the ultraviolet completion. Only in scalar--tensor theories could the two-scale window probe beyond positivity, and then at most one family of dimension-ten operators. The axial sector of Einstein--dilaton--Gauss--Bonnet gravity and Einstein--Maxwell theory illustrate these results.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2610.28721",
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Leonardo Juliano"
    },
    {
      "name": "Enrico Trincherini"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/685x91g0pfqtk.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2610.28721",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "685x91g0pfqtk",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28721",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "gr-qc"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "hep-th"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3106|Black Holes and Theoretical Physics"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7223221414",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.28721",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-10-20",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/685x91g0pfqtk.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:35:50Z",
      "native_id": "2610.28721",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.28721"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:gr-qc",
      "subfield": "gravitation"
    },
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "arxiv:hep-th",
      "subfield": "high-energy"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Quasinormal-mode stability bounds in gravitational EFT: resolvability, predictivity, and positivity",
  "title_text": "Quasinormal-mode stability bounds in gravitational EFT: resolvability, predictivity, and positivity",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:35:50Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/685x91g0pfqtk",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}