Thermal origin of black hole quasinormal modes
7 affiliations
- 1National Sun Yat-sen University
- 2Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences
- 3New York University Abu Dhabi
- 4Theoretical Physics Department, CERN
- 5National Technical University of Athens
- 6University of Cambridge
- 7University of Geneva
Abstract
A bstract : When a black hole rings after a merger, it emits gravitational waves at characteristic frequencies known as quasinormal modes (QNMs). In the eikonal limit, these modes are governed by the unstable circular light orbits that form the photon ring. In this work, we demonstrate that the ringing of a black hole has a precise thermal interpretation. A probe string propagating in the near-ring geometry acquires an induced Rindler horizon on its worldsheet, with a temperature set by the Lyapunov exponent of the photon ring. Out of this structure, the black hole QNMs emerge as thermal excitations, so that the characteristic ringing of a black hole is the retarded response of a thermal system living on the photon ring. We explicitly derive the QNM spectrum from two complementary perspectives: microscopically, via unstable transverse worldsheet fluctuations, and macroscopically, through the pole structure of the causal response function of an open thermal quantum system.
Related
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- Quasinormal modes as probes of black hole reentrant phase transitions
- Quasinormal modes of Reissner-Nordström black hole from bound state spectrum
- Cubic Quasinormal Modes in the Black-Hole Ringdown
BibTeX
@article{giataganas2026thermal,
title = {{Thermal origin of black hole quasinormal modes}},
author = {D. Giataganas and G. F. Giudice and A. Kehagias and F. Quevedo and A. Riotto},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1007/jhep10(2026)275},
url = {https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP10(2026)275},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Thermal origin of black hole quasinormal modes
AU - D. Giataganas
AU - G. F. Giudice
AU - A. Kehagias
AU - F. Quevedo
AU - A. Riotto
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
JO - Journal of High Energy Physics
DO - 10.1007/jhep10(2026)275
UR - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/JHEP10(2026)275
AB - A bstract : When a black hole rings after a merger, it emits gravitational waves at characteristic frequencies known as quasinormal modes (QNMs). In the eikonal limit, these modes are governed by the unstable circular light orbits that form the photon ring. In this work, we demonstrate that the ringing of a black hole has a precise thermal interpretation. A probe string propagating in the near-ring geometry acquires an induced Rindler horizon on its worldsheet, with a temperature set by the Lyapunov exponent of the photon ring. Out of this structure, the black hole QNMs emerge as thermal excitations, so that the characteristic ringing of a black hole is the retarded response of a thermal system living on the photon ring. We explicitly derive the QNM spectrum from two complementary perspectives: microscopically, via unstable transverse worldsheet fluctuations, and macroscopically, through the pole structure of the causal response function of an open thermal quantum system.
SN - 1029-8479
ER -