arXiv · 2610.18989
Black Hole Fine Structure
Abstract
In General Relativity, axial and polar black-hole perturbations share identical quasinormal-mode spectra, a property known as isospectrality. New physics can break this degeneracy, producing a spectral splitting analogous to atomic fine structure. We perform a theory-agnostic search for such splitting in gravitational-wave observations. We find no evidence for isospectrality breaking and place a combined $90\%$ upper limit of $<28.5\%$ on the relative frequency splitting. We map these constraints onto several modified-gravity theories, constraining the coupling-lengths to be $\lesssim 28\,\mathrm{km}$.
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Adrian Ka-Wai Chung, Richard Dyer, Tomasz Kinowski, Christopher J. Moore. 2026-10-13. Black Hole Fine Structure. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.18989
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