Echoes from the black holes: Evidence of higher order corrections to General Relativity in strong gravity regime

Abstract: We show that the higher order curvature corrections to general relativity in the strong gravity regime of near horizon scales produce a rapidly oscillating and infalling Ricci scalar fireball just outside the horizon. This can generate the ringdown modes of gravitational waves having the same natural frequency as those which are generated by the black hole mergers. Our analysis provides a viable explanation to the echoes in the ringdown modes recently detected from the LIGO data, without invoking the existence of any exotic structures at the horizon.