Spectral densification and macroscopic phase delay of gravitational echoes from exotic compact objects
Abstract
Gravitational-wave echoes from Exotic Compact Objects (ECOs) provide an observable probe for horizon-scale physics. Standard phenomenological models for these signals typically assume a constant Free Spectral Range, relying on the geometric optics approximation. In this work, we demonstrate that wave dispersion at the photon sphere induces a systematic deviation from this assumption, manifesting instead as a hyperbolic spectral densification. By employing an analytical framework based on the Riccati equation and macroscopic impedance mapping, we extract the spectrum of these high-finesse resonances without semi-classical approximations. We characterize the structural transition from the eikonal geometric asymptote () down to the wave-tunneling dominated quadrupolar mode (). In this wave-dominated regime (), the macroscopic deviation from the semi-classical limit is governed by a phenomenological inverse power law. Finally, we show that this macroscopic densification isolates the structural dispersion of the external spacetime, decoupled from the boundary microphysics, provided the membrane phase shift is frequency-independent.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2607.29273,
title = {Spectral densification and macroscopic phase delay of gravitational echoes from exotic compact objects},
author = {Corentin Guigot},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.29273},
year = {2026}
}