Ergodic Hysteresis of the Kerr black hole spectrum

Abstract

We uncover a cascade of exceptional points (EPs) in the quasinormal mode spectrum of massive scalar perturbations of Kerr black holes, revealing an intricate non-Hermitian structure underlying their linear response. The cascade originates from a single damped mode that enters the extremal spectrum for sufficiently large field masses. We obtain evidence for an infinite sequence of EPs in the $(\ell,m)=(1,1)$ and $(2,2)$ sectors near the extremal limit, mediating the transition between damped and zero-damping modes. Each EP carries a geometric phase that enables adiabatic mode mixing across the entire overtone spectrum, a phenomenon we refer to as adiabatic ergodicity.