Quasinormal modes of slowly-rotating black holes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity

The detection of gravitational waves from compact binary mergers by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration has, for the first time, allowed us to test relativistic gravity in its strong, dynamical, and nonlinear regime, thus opening a new arena to confront general relativity (and modifications thereof) against observations. We consider a theory which modifies general relativity by introducing a scalar field coupled to a parity-iolating curvature term known as dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. In this theory, spinning black holes are different from their general relativistic counterparts and can thus serve as probes to this theory. We study linear gravito-scalar perturbations of black holes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity at leading order in spin and (i) obtain the perturbed field equations describing the evolution of the perturbed gravitational and scalar fields, (ii) numerically solve these equations by direct integration to calculate the quasinormal mode frequencies for the dominant and higher multipoles and tabulate them, (iii) find strong evidence that these rotating black holes are linearly stable, and (iv) present general fitting functions for different multipoles for gravitational and scalar quasinormal mode frequencies in terms of spin and Chern-Simons coupling parameter. Our results can be used to validate the ringdown of small-spin remnants of numerical relativity simulations of black hole binaries in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity and pave the way towards future tests of this theory with gravitational wave ringdown observations.

Automated summary

The detection of gravitational waves from compact binary mergers by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration has opened a new arena to test general relativity and its modifications, allowing us to explore the strong, dynamical, and nonlinear regime of relativistic gravity. The study focuses on a theory that modifies general relativity by introducing a scalar field coupled to a parity-iolating curvature term, known as dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, and investigates the linear gravito-scalar perturbations of black holes in this theory. The findings provide evidence for the stability of rotating black holes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity and offer fitting functions for quasinormal mode frequencies, which can be used for future tests of the theory with gravitational wave ringdown observations.