5–9 Jul 2026
University of Canterbury
Pacific/Auckland timezone

Pseudospectrum and (in)stability of black hole total transmission mode

8 Jul 2026, 13:30
20m
Room E7 (Rātā / Engineering Core Building, University of Canterbury)

Room E7

Rātā / Engineering Core Building, University of Canterbury

63 Creyke Road, Ilam, Christchurch 8041, New Zealand
Parallel Session Talk Parallel sessions

Speaker

Yu-Sen Zhou (University of Science and Technology of China)

Description

Total transmission modes (TTMs) are modes with complex frequencies that propagate across a black hole spacetime without reflection. Recently, it is found that suitably tailored time-dependent scattering can excite these complex modes and suppress the reflected signal for the entire duration of the process, a phenomenon referred to as virtual absorption. Motivated by this, we present a study of the spectrum stability of TTMs using pseudospectrum and condition numbers. We focus on perturbations of $d$-dimensional Tangherlini black holes and recast the TTM problem as a generalized eigenvalue problem by utilizing the Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates. The results show that TTMs are generically spectrally unstable, with sensitivity increasing for higher overtones, in close analogy with quasinormal modes. A notable exception is the purely imaginary TTM in the positive imaginary axis in higher dimensions. Its pseudospectrum contours are nearly concentric, and its condition number is orders of magnitude smaller than those of the overtones, indicating enhanced spectral stability. Although its four-dimensional counterpart is spectrally unstable, it becomes stable rather quickly as the spacetime dimension increases. Additionally, we confirm that purely imaginary TTMs occur for gravitational vector perturbations, whereas genuinely complex TTM families appear only in sufficiently high dimensions, $d \geqslant 8$, extending earlier claims that placed the onset at $d \geqslant 10$.

Research Area Gravity: Geometric theory

Author

Yu-Sen Zhou (University of Science and Technology of China)

Co-authors

Prof. Li-Ming Cao (University of Science and Technology of China) Dr Liang-Bi Wu Mr Ming-Fei Ji (University of Science and Technology of China)

Presentation materials