Superradiant instabilities in aD-dimensional small Reissner-Nordström-anti-de Sitter black hole

Abstract

We investigate the superradiant instability for a charged scalar field in a $D$-dimensional small Reissner--Nordstr\"om--anti-de Sitter (RN-AdS) black hole. First, we solve the charged Klein-Gordon equation analytically by a matching method. We show that the general $D$-dimensional quasinormal frequencies depend on the relation between the angular momentum quantum number, $\ensuremath{\ell}$, and $D$. When $\ensuremath{\ell}$ is a (non-negative) integer multiple of $D\ensuremath{-}3$, i.e. $\ensuremath{\ell}=p(D\ensuremath{-}3)$, we find an analytical quasinormal frequency formula adding a purely imaginary correction to the AdS normal frequencies. This is the case for all $\ensuremath{\ell}$ modes in $D=4$. For general $D$ there are two more cases: i) When $\ensuremath{\ell}$ obeys $\ensuremath{\ell}=(p+\frac{1}{2})(D\ensuremath{-}3)$, which can occur for odd $D$, we observe that the matching method fails, since the near- and far-region solutions have different functional dependences. ii) For all other cases, the analytical quasinormal frequency formula gives a complex correction to the AdS normal frequencies. Second, we perform a numerical calculation which confirms the analytical formulas obtained with the matching method and allows us to explore the case where that method failed. In the latter case, as in the former, we verify that all $\ensuremath{\ell}$ modes for all $D$ may become superradiant, which contradicts a previous claim in the literature.