Butterfly in Spacetime: Inherent Instabilities in Stable Black Holes

Abstract

This paper numerically studies if the stability of a stable black hole is robust against the small perturbation on geometry near its event horizon. As a toy model, it encodes the such perturbation into deformations of Regge-Wheeler potential. It considers three different types of local deformations-the negative static bump potential, the stochastic potential and bump potential modulated by time function in low frequency limit. Our numerical results show that infinitesimal local deformations on Regge-Wheeler potential near the horizon can overturn stability of a stable black hole, implying that late-time behavior of a stable black hole is extremely sensitive to geometry near horizon. Specially, certain deformations that stabilize systems in flat backgrounds can destabilize otherwise stable black holes. It also shows that horizon-induced redshift transforms near-horizon quantum fluctuations into classical-scale stochastic deformations capable of triggering instability, implying that even an isolated black hole cannot keep stable in extended timescales.