Quasinormal modes of Schwarzschild black holes: Defined and calculated via Laplace transformation

Quasinormal modes play a prominent role in the literature when dealing with the propagation of linearized perturbations of the Schwarzschild geometry. We show that space-time properties of the solutions of the perturbation equation imply the existence of a unique Green's function of the Laplace-transformed wave equation. This Green's function may be constructed from solutions of the homogeneous time-independent equation, which are uniquely characterized by the boundary conditions they satisfy. These boundary conditions are identified as the boundary conditions usually imposed for quasinormal-mode solutions. It turns out that solutions of the homogeneous equation exist which satisfy these boundary conditions at the horizon and at spatial infinity simultaneously, leading to poles of the Green's function. We therefore propose to define quasinormal-mode frequencies as the poles of the Green's function for the Laplace-transformed equation. On the basis of this definition a new technique for the numerical calculation of quasinormal frequencies is developed. The results agree with computations of Leaver, but not with more recent results obtained by Guinn, Will, Kojima, and Schutz.