Scalar field evolution in Gauss-Bonnet black holes

Abstract

It is presented a thorough analysis of scalar perturbations in the background of Gauss-Bonnet, Gauss-Bonnet-de Sitter and Gauss-Bonnet-anti-de Sitter black hole spacetimes. The perturbations are considered both in frequency and time domain. The dependence of the scalar field evolution on the values of the cosmological constant $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ and the Gauss-Bonnet coupling $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ is investigated. For Gauss-Bonnet and Gauss-Bonnet-de Sitter black holes, at asymptotically late times either power-law or exponential tails dominate, while for Gauss-Bonnet-anti-de Sitter black hole, the quasinormal modes govern the scalar field decay at all times. The power-law tails at asymptotically late times for odd-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet black holes does not depend on $\ensuremath{\alpha}$, even though the black hole metric contains $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ as a new parameter. The corrections to quasinormal spectrum due to Gauss-Bonnet coupling is not small and should not be neglected. For the limit of near extremal value of the (positive) cosmological constant and pure de Sitter and anti-de Sitter modes in Gauss-Bonnet gravity we have found analytical expressions.