English

Spectral densification and macroscopic phase delay of gravitational echoes from exotic compact objects

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2026-07-31 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

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 (1\ell \gg 1) down to the wave-tunneling dominated quadrupolar mode (=2\ell=2). In this wave-dominated regime ([2,10]\ell \in [2, 10]), the macroscopic deviation from the semi-classical limit is governed by a phenomenological L3/2\mathcal{L}^{-3/2} 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}
}