Two Languages for the Same Resonance: From Nuclear Decay to Black-Hole Ringdown

Abstract

Quantum resonances and black-hole quasinormal modes (QNMs) are described by closely related mathematics: radiative boundary conditions, analytic continuation of Green functions or resolvents, poles on nonphysical sheets, and non-self-adjoint spectral representations. This article does not introduce that equivalence but reconstructs its genealogy. Nuclear resonance theory grew from radioactive decay, reaction cross sections, metastable compound states, and complex energies, whereas black-hole perturbation theory grew from spacetime stability and causal response. We place the two developments on a common chronology, from Sommerfeld's radiation condition and early nuclear-decay theory through Regge--Wheeler perturbations, Vishveshwara's 1968 dissertation and 1970 papers, Press's 1971 quasi-normal terminology, and the independent Aguilar--Balslev--Combes theory of analytic dilation, then follow their later mathematical reunification in scattering-resonance theory. Alongside the chronology, we give a working dictionary relating no-incoming and horizon-ingoing/infinity-outgoing conditions, pole energy and complex frequency, width and damping rate, residues and excitation factors, and nonresonant background with branch-cut and prompt contributions. The aim is to make the cross-disciplinary equivalence operational without flattening its history, and to distinguish mathematical equivalence from historical genealogy.