Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Gravitational perturbations of rotating black holes in higher dimensions generally obey coupled partial differential equations. We show that scalar gravitational perturbations invariant under rotations of the transverse sphere of a singly spinning Myers-Perry black hole separate, despite the obstruction to a decoupled Teukolsky equation. Two commuting, second-order angular operators organise the three gauge-invariant curvature components into joint eigenfunctions. The physical radial problem is a $2\times2$ first-order system, equivalent to a single second-order equation. This gives a separation of the sector containing both the bar-mode and axisymmetric ultraspinning instabilities. Using only ordinary differential equations, we compute the bar-mode quasinormal spectrum in $d=5,6,7$ and find instability onsets at $a/r_+=0.90498$ and $0.83228$ in $d=6,7$. We also compute the growing axisymmetric modes and their onset rotations in $d=6,\ldots,9$. The construction shows how separability can survive the coupling between gravitational polarisations.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Santos, Jorge E.
Institution: University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222177540