Non-modal effects in black hole perturbation theory: Transient Superradiance
Javier Carballo, Christiana Pantelidou, Benjamin Withers
Published: 2025/3/7
Abstract
We study the non-modal stability of black hole spacetimes under linear perturbations. We show that large-amplitude growth can occur at finite time, despite asymptotic decay of linear perturbations. In the example presented, the physical mechanism is a transient form of superradiance, and is qualitatively similar to the transition to turbulence in Navier-Stokes shear flows. As part of the construction we provide a theorem for the positivity of QNM energies, and introduce a truncated-Hamiltonian approach to black hole pseudospectra which does not suffer from convergence issues.