Evolution of black hole echo modes and the causality dilemma

Abstract: It has been shown that black hole quasinormal modes are subject to spectral instability, typically triggered by metric perturbations. These perturbations, which can introduce a minor bump in the effective potential of the wave equation, give rise to a novel branch of asymptotic quasinormal modes, dubbed the {\it echo modes}, which lie mainly parallel to the real frequency axis. This study explores the evolution of the echo modes and their interplay with the outward spiral motion observed in low-lying quasinormal modes. As the bump in the effective potential moves away from the central black hole, the echo modes collectively shift toward the real axis, with the spacing between successive modes decreasing uniformly. This collective motion occurs simultaneously with the spiral of the low-lying modes until the echo modes eventually take over the fundamental quasinormal mode. In the time domain, such a takeover coincides with a transition point for the temporal waveform, where the distinction between the original black hole's ringdown and the echoes becomes clear. This marks a transition in the characteristics of the waveform from primarily damped oscillations, dominated by the damping rate of the fundamental mode, to echo waves, characterized by periodic echo pulses. We argue that this phenomenon is universal by employing analytical and numerical analyses. We first elucidate our arguments using explicit but simplified toy models, where the effective potential barriers are disjoint. The derivations are then generalized to scenarios where perturbations are introduced on top of a black hole metric with a continuous effective potential. The observational implications, particularly the causality dilemma, are elaborated. We show that the echo modes can be extracted by applying the Fourier transform to ringdown waveforms, which can be important for gravitational wave observations.