Jerzy Matyjasek

The higher-order WKB Mathematica® code for computing quasinormal modes, whose accuracy was significantly enhanced through extensions to higher orders and, in particular, through the use of Pad´e resummation, has been widely employed in numerous studies over the past several years. In this work, we present an updated and optimized version of the code. The main improvement consists in expanding the effective potential in a Taylor series around its maximum, rather than evaluating the full analytic expression of the WKB formula for each specific potential. This modification leads to a substantial reduction in computation time. In cases where the effective potential is complicated and involves non-rational functions, the speed gain can reach several orders of magnitude, while preserving the accuracy of the method.

We discuss new recurrence-based methods for calculating the complex frequencies of the quasinormal modes of black holes. These methods are based on the Frobenius series solutions of the differential equation describing the linearized radial perturbations. Within the general method, we propose two approaches: the first involves calculating the series coefficients, while the second employs generalized continued fractions. Moreover, as a consequence of this analysis, we present a computationally efficient and convenient method that uses double convergence acceleration, consisting of the application of the Wynn algorithm to the approximants obtained from the Hill determinants, with the Leaver-Nollert-Zhidenko-like tail approximations taken into account. The latter is particularly important for stabilizing and enabling the calculations of modes with small real parts as well as higher overtones. The method demonstrates exceptionally high accuracy. We emphasize that Gaussian elimination is unnecessary in all of these calculations. We consider $D$-dimensional ($3<D<10$) Schwarzschild-Tangherlini black holes as concrete examples. Specifically, we calculate the quasinormal modes of the $(2+1)$-dimensional acoustic black hole (which is closely related to the five-dimensional Schwarzschild-Tangherlini black holes), the electromagnetic-vector modes of the six-dimensional black holes and the scalar (gravitational tensor) modes in the seven-dimensional case. We believe that the methods presented here are applicable beyond the examples shown, also outside the domain of the black hole physics.

We study the quasinormal modes of the spherically-symmetric $(2+1)$-dimensional analogue black hole, modeled by the ``draining bathtub'' fluid flow, and the $(3+1)$-dimensional canonical acoustic black hole. In the both cases the emphasis is on the accuracy. Formally, the radial equation describing perturbations of the $(2+1)$-dimensional black hole is a special case of the general master equation of the 5-dimensional Tangherlini black hole. Similarly, the $(3+1)$-dimensional equation can be obtained from the master equation of the 7-dimensional Tangherlini black hole. For the $(2+1)$-dimensional analogue black hole we used three major techniques: the higher-order WKB method with the Padé summation, the Hill-determinant method and the continued fraction method, the latter two with the convergence acceleration. In the $(3+1)$-dimensional case, we propose the simpler recurrence relations and explicitly demonstrate that both recurrences, i.e., the eight-term and the six-term recurrences yield identical results. Since the application of the continued-fraction method require five (or three) consecutive Gauss eliminations, we decided not to use this technique in the $(3+1)$-dimensional case. Instead, we used the Hill-determinant method in the two incarnations and the higher-order WKB. We accept the results of our calculations if at least two (algorithmically) independent methods give the same answer to some prescribed accuracy. Our results correct and extend the results existing in the literature and we believe that we approached assumed accuracy of 9 decimal places. In most cases, there is perfect agreement between all the methods; however, in a few cases, the performance of the higher-order WKB method is slightly worse.

We consider the gravitational quasinormal modes of the static and spherically-symmetric dirty black holes in the effective theory of gravity with the third order curvature term inspired by the Goroff-Sagnotti calculation. It is demonstrated that using the WKB-Padé summation proposed in [J. Matyjasek and M. Opala, Phys. Rev. D 96, 024011 (2017)] one can achieve sufficient accuracy to calculate corrections to the complex frequencies of the quasinormal modes caused by the Goroff-Sagnotti curvature term. It is shown that the curvature correction (with our choice of the sign of the coupling constant) increases damping of the fundamental modes (except for the lowest fundamental mode) and decreases their frequencies. We argue that the methods adopted in this paper can be used in the analysis of the influence of the higher-order curvature terms upon the quasinormal modes and in a number of related problems that require high accuracy.