Junquan Su | Searcharxiv

arXiv2026

Gravitational Waves from Green's Function Decomposition for a Kerr black hole: I. Equatorial ISCO Plunge

We present a decomposition of the Kerr Green's function in the time domain, motivated by the frequency-domain split previously studied in the Schwarzschild limit. We show that the identification of a quasinormal-mode contribution, a direct part, and a late-time tail is still available, where the split times are determined by the black hole spin and positions of the emitter and receiver. We have checked this Green's function with time-domain Teukolsky numerical simulations and find excellent agreement. We also apply this decomposed Green's function in the time domain to a model problem with a test particle plunging into a Kerr black hole. The dynamically excited direct wave and quasinormal modes are obtained by convoluting the Green's function with the particle's source term, which may be viewed as the first order in mass ratio of a spinning black hole ringdown.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Decomposition of Schwarzschild Green's Function

We present a formulation of the spherically decomposed Green's function for a Schwarzschild black hole, based on a decomposition into two components, $G^+$ and $G^-$, based on their large-frequency behaviour. While similar decompositions have been considered previously, here we systematically apply it to Schwarzschild spacetime and analyze its implications for the analytic structure of the Green's function in the complex-frequency plane. We show that both $G^+$ and $G^-$ possess branch cuts along the imaginary axis, which give rise to the direct part and the late-time tail, while the poles of $G^+$ correspond to the quasinormal mode spectrum. This allows us to identify a $\textit{branch-cut direct part}$, a quasinormal-mode contribution, and a late-time tail through contours adapted to different causal spacetime regions. This is in sharp contrast to Leaver's original formulation, where the prompt response is tied to a technically difficult large-arc contribution. We validate our decomposition with independent time-domain Regge-Wheeler simulations finding excellent agreement. Our results provide a practical and physically transparent framework for disentangling the distinct pieces of the Schwarzschild response, and offer a natural starting point for extensions to Kerr perturbations and non-linear ringdown physics.

gr-qc↗