Riesz--Laurent representation of black-hole scattering and sourced response at exceptional points

Abstract

At a black-hole exceptional point (EP), two quasinormal modes coalesce and their separate residues become ill-conditioned. Rather than postulating a near-degenerate modal fit, we derive the response constructively from the complex-scaled Regge--Wheeler--Zerilli resolvent, treating the modes as one isolated rank-two Riesz cluster. Its zeroth and first contour moments determine an exact pair resolvent on both sides of, and at, the EP, without labeling the individual modes or constructing a normalized Jordan chain. At a second-order EP, these moments determine the simple- and double-pole Laurent operators. Although the modal decomposition is singular, fixed-real-frequency transmission and the greybody factor remain real-analytic through the EP, provided that the cluster remains isolated, the complementary resolvent is regular, and no pole reaches the physical axis. Source--observer matrix elements of the Laurent operators define finite, normalization-independent amplitudes and fix both the constant and linear-in-time terms in the causal ringdown. Their equality with the coefficients from the Jost double-zero expansion shows that they are operator-defined coefficients of the specified physical response, rather than fitting parameters. Thus two cluster moments provide mode-label-free data from which both scattering and driven responses follow.