Black Hole 'Hair' Could Show in Merger Ringdown Signals

A study in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics found that if real black holes violate the no-hair theorem, it would appear in the frequency and damping rate of gravitational waves from mergers. The authors compared standard models with Hayward and Bardeen black holes and found unique signatures for each.

• Standard black hole is described only by mass, spin and charge
• Hayward and Bardeen models allow 'hair' and lack a strict singularity
• Ringdown frequency and damping rate differ for each model
• Current gravitational wave detectors are not sensitive enough to test