Quantum Effects Related To Quasinormal Modes and Power Law Tails in Black Hole Spacetimes w Submission

It is shown that there are relationships between quasinormal modes and quantum effects in black hole spacetimes. The modes of a quantum field in a simple model of black hole formation exhibit behaviors during part of their evolution that can be associated with quasinormal modes. This is also true of the modes for a quantum field in the Unruh state in Schwarzschild spacetime. Power law tails where some quantity such as the amplitude of a mode falls off at late times like an inverse power of the time, are also shown to occur. Implications for the stress-energy of the quantum field are discussed.