Squeezed Quasinormal Modes from Nonlinear Gravitational Effects

When two black holes merge, the newly formed black hole "rings down," radiating gravitational waves at a set of characteristic frequencies known as quasinormal modes. In this work, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek and Sreenath K. Manikandan show that nonlinear gravitational effects cause these long-lived modes to become quantum mechanically squeezed, a subtle quantum correlation imprinted on the radiation.

For the fundamental mode of a Schwarzschild black hole, they estimate the effect at about 1%, and they point toward ways it might eventually be tested experimentally. The result opens a new window on the quantum character of gravitational waves.

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