English

Nonlinear tails of massive scalar fields around a black hole

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-04-14 v2

Abstract

Nonlinear effects play a fundamental role in the late-time ringdown of black holes, with direct implications for gravitational-wave observations. For massive fields, these dynamics become richer, yet their nonlinear signatures remain poorly understood. Here, we systematically study nonlinear tails of massive scalar perturbations, from a toy model with ingoing and outgoing sources to a self-interacting scalar model, revealing nonlinear tails and contrasting the results with their linear counterparts. We find that the nonlinear tails of massive scalar fields, opposite to massless ones, decay as the same rate as linear tails in the intermediate time, independent of source parameters or initial conditions. Nevertheless, quadratic quasinormal modes could serve as a probe to the nonlinear effects of massive fields.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.16016,
  title  = {Nonlinear tails of massive scalar fields around a black hole},
  author = {Caiying Shao and Zhen-Tao He and Jiageng Jiao and Jingqi Lai and Jun-Xi Shi and Yu Tian and Dandan Yuan and Hongbao Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.16016},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages, 6 figures. Version published in PRD