Low-lying quasinormal modes of topological AdS black holes and hydrodynamics

Abstract

We analytically calculate the low-lying gravitational quasinormal modes of a topological AdS black hole of arbitrary dimension in the high temperature limit. We show that they are in agreement with corresponding results from the hydrodynamics of the gauge theory plasma on the boundary, as required by the AdS/CFT (anti--de Sitter/conformal field theories) correspondence. For some of these modes, we obtain a lifetime which is comparable to or longer than the longest lifetime of perturbations of spherical black holes. These modes might play a significant role in the late-time behavior of the gauge theory plasma.