Sound from extra dimensions: Quasinormal modes of a thick brane

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the quasinormal modes of a thick brane system. Considering the transverse-traceless tensor perturbation of the brane metric, we obtain the Schr\"odinger-like equation of the Kaluza-Klein modes of the tensor perturbation. Then we use the Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation and the asymptotic iteration method to solve this Schr\"odinger-like equation. We also study the numeric evolution of an initial wave packet against the thick brane. The results show that there is a set of discrete quasinormal modes in the thick brane model. These quasinormal modes appear as the decaying massive gravitons for a brane observer. They are characteristic modes of the thick brane and can reflect the structure of the thick brane.