Gravitino and other spin-3/2 quasinormal modes in Schwarzschild-AdS spacetime

Abstract

We investigate quasinormal mode frequencies $ω_n$ of gravitinos and generic massive spin-3/2 fields in a Schwarzschild-AdS$_D$ background in spacetime dimension $D>3$, in the black brane (large black hole) limit appropriate to many applications of the AdS/CFT correspondence. First, we find asymptotic formulas for $ω_n$ in the limit of large overtone number $n$. Asymptotically, $ω_n \simeq n Δω+ O(\ln n) + O(n^0)$, where $Δω$ is a known constant, and here we compute the $O(\ln n)$ and $O(n^0)$ corrections to the leading $O(n)$ behavior. Then we compare to numerical calculations of exact quasinormal mode frequencies. Along the way, we also improve the reach and accuracy of an earlier, similar analysis of spin-1/2 fields.

31 pages, 3 figures [change from v1: very minor changes to text, and some references added]