Periodicity and area spectrum of black holes

Abstract

The recent speculation of Maggiore that the periodicity of a black hole may be the origin of the area quantization law is confirmed. We exclusively utilize the period of motion of an outgoing wave, which is shown to be related to the vibrational frequency of the perturbed black hole, to quantize the horizon areas of a Schwarzschild black hole and a Kerr black hole. It is shown that the equally spaced area spectrum for both cases takes the same form and the spacing is the same as that obtained through the quasinormal mode frequencies. Particularly, for a Kerr black hole, the small angular momentum assumption, which is necessary from the perspective of quasinormal mode, is not employed as the general area spacing is reproduced.