Black hole quasinormal modes and isospectrality in Deser-Woodard nonlocal gravity

Abstract

We investigate the gravitational perturbations of the Schwarzschild black hole in the nonlocal gravity model recently proposed by Deser and Woodard (DW-II). The analysis is performed in the localized version in which the nonlocal corrections are represented by some auxiliary scalar fields. We find that the nonlocal corrections do not affect the axial gravitational perturbations, and hence the axial modes are completely identical to those in General Relativity (GR). However, the polar modes get different from their GR counterparts when the scalar fields are excited at the background level. In such a case the polar modes are sourced by an additional massless scalar mode and, as a result, the isospectrality between the axial and the polar modes breaks down. We also perform a similar analysis for the predecessor of this model (DW-I) and arrive at the same conclusion for it.

Lessons from black hole quasinormal modes in modified gravity

“…In fact, in some theories of gravity (e.g. the nonlocal gravity [85,86]), whether the dynamical degrees of freedom are excited or not is not determined by the equations of motion, but depends on the choice of boundary conditions [87], i.e., the values of the fields at spatial infinity. If these additional modes are not excited, or their amplitudes are too small, the tests of gravity by examining the excitation of these modes would be extremely challenging.…”