English

Quasinormal Modes of pp-Wave Spacetimes and Zero Temperature Dissipation

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-04-23 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We compute the quasinormal mode spectrum of scalar perturbations on Kaigorodov pp-wave spacetimes, the horizonless gravity duals of zero temperature null fluids. The pp-wave deformation promotes the Poincar\'e horizon at r=0r=0 to an irregular singular point of rank (d+2)/2(d+2)/2, which acts as a geometric absorber for ingoing waves: rank~00 corresponds to thermal dissipation, rank~11 to quantum-critical (extremal black hole), and rank~2\geq 2 to gapped, horizonless dissipation. For d=2d=2 (extremal BTZ) the radial equation reduces to the Whittaker equation with exact non-dissipative spectrum Im(ω)=0\mathrm{Im}(\omega)=0; for d3d \geq 3 all modes satisfy Im(ωn)<0\mathrm{Im}(\omega_n) < 0, establishing zero temperature dissipation without horizon or entropy. At zeroth order the radial equation becomes Bessel's equation of order μ=d/(d+2)\mu=d/(d+2), proving all scalar QNMs are gapped. Numerical spectra for d=3,4,5d=3,4,5 yield a discrete dissipative tower and confirm linear stability.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.13516,
  title  = {Quasinormal Modes of pp-Wave Spacetimes and Zero Temperature Dissipation},
  author = {Huayu Dai and Guangtao Zeng},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.13516},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

v2: Added a detailed description of Figure 1 and updated references