Black holes and nilmanifolds: quasinormal modes as the fingerprints of extra dimensions?

We investigate whether quasinormal modes (QNMs) can be used in the search for signatures of extra dimensions. To address a gap in the Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) literature, we focus here on higher dimensions characterised by negative Ricci curvature. As a first step, we consider a product space comprised of a four-dimensional Schwarzschild black hole space-time and a three-dimensional nilmanifold (twisted torus); we model the black hole perturbations as a scalar test field. We suggest that the extra-dimensional geometry can be stylised in the QNM effective potential as a squared mass-like term representing the Kaluza–Klein (KK) spectrum. We then compute the corresponding QNM spectrum using three different numerical methods, and determine a possible “detectability bound” beyond which KK masses cannot be detected using QNMs.