Nonquasinormal Modes and Black Hole Physics

The near-horizon geometry of a large class of extremal and near-extremal black holes in string and M-theory contains three-dimensional asymptotically anti–de Sitter space. Motivated by this structure, we are led naturally to a discrete set of complex frequencies defined in terms of the monodromy at the inner and outer horizons of the black hole. We show that the correspondence principle, whereby the real part of these “nonquasinormal frequencies” is identified with certain fundamental quanta, leads directly to the correct quantum behavior of the near-horizon Virasoro algebra, and thus the black hole entropy. Remarkably, for the rotating black hole in five dimensions we also reproduce the fractionization of conformal weights predicted in string theory.