Signatures of extra dimensions in gravitational waves from black hole quasinormal modes

In this work, we have derived the evolution equation for gravitational perturbation in four-dimensional spacetime in the presence of a spatial extra dimension. The evolution equation is derived by perturbing the effective gravitational field equations on the four-dimensional spacetime, which inherits nontrivial higher-dimensional effects. Note that this is different from the perturbation of the five-dimensional gravitational field equations that exist in the literature and possess quantitatively new features. The gravitational perturbation has further been decomposed into a purely four-dimensional part and another piece that depends on extra dimensions. The four-dimensional gravitational perturbation now admits massive propagating degrees of freedom, owing to the existence of higher dimensions. We have also studied the influence of these massive propagating modes on the quasinormal mode frequencies, signaling the higher-dimensional nature of the spacetime, and have contrasted these massive modes with the massless modes in general relativity. Surprisingly, it turns out that the massive modes experience damping much smaller than that of the massless modes in general relativity and may even dominate over and above the general relativity contribution if one observes the ringdown phase of a black hole merger event at sufficiently late times. Furthermore, the whole analytical framework has been supplemented by the fully numerical Cauchy evolution problem, as well. In this context, we have shown that, except for minute details, the overall features of the gravitational perturbations are captured both in the Cauchy evolution as well as in the analysis of quasinormal modes. The implications on observations of black holes with LIGO and proposed space missions such as LISA are also discussed.