English

Nonlinear tails in the Kerr black hole ringdown

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-03-24 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Power law tails induced by nonlinearities of General Relativity (``sourced'' or ``nonlinear'' tails) were recently shown to dominate the late time waveform of Schwarzschild black hole ringdowns. We extend the analytical results regarding such nonlinear tails from Schwarzschild to Kerr black holes by studying the Teukolsky equation. Using a far field approximation to the radial Green's function, we analytically derived the tail power law to be tβst^{-\ell-\beta-s} for spin-weight s0s \neq 0, harmonic mode (m)(\ell m) and source decay rβr^{-\beta}. We numerically confirmed these results for β=0,1\beta = 0, 1. We also demonstrate the dynamical formation of such nonlinear tails for a massless scalar by numerically solving the Teukolsky equation. In all numerical results, Kerr black hole nonlinear tails have the same power laws as that for Schwarzschild black holes, as expected from the Minkowski nature of the spacetime in the far field region.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.20379,
  title  = {Nonlinear tails in the Kerr black hole ringdown},
  author = {Siyang Ling and Sam S. C. Wong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.20379},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:30:30.894Z