William Boyce (Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge) – Effective Field Theory Corrections to Black Hole Quasinormal Modes

A fundamental observable of black holes is their quasinormal mode (QNM) spectrum: the characteristic frequencies and decay rates of linear perturbations. In gravitational wave astronomy, QNMs can be measured during the ringdown phase of a black hole merger to infer properties of the remnant black hole. In holography, QNMs describe the relaxation of thermal states in the dual theory. In both of these cases, at high curvature scales GR should be supplemented by higher-derivative corrections, which can be treated in the framework of effective field theory (EFT). In this seminar I will give a brief overview of how to compute the EFT corrections to black hole QNM spectra in these settings. I will then discuss recent work on how these corrections can become amplified both for near-extremal black holes and for black holes well within the subextremal range. Based on work in collaboration with Jorge Santos.