Quasinormal modes and the analytical continuation of non-self-adjoint operators

We briefly review the analytical continuation method for determining quasinormal modes (QNMs) and the associated frequencies in open systems. We explore two exactly solvable cases based on the Pöschl–Teller potential to show that the analytical continuation method cannot determine the full set of QNMs and frequencies of a given problem starting from the associated bound state problem in quantum mechanics. The root of the problem is that many QNMs are the analytically continued counterparts of solutions that do not belong to the domain where the associated Schrödinger operator is self-adjoint, challenging the application of the method for determining full sets of QNMs. We illustrate these problems through the physically relevant case of BTZ black holes, where the natural domain of the problem is the negative real line.