Quasinormal modes, bifurcations, and nonuniqueness of charged scalar-tensor black holes

In the present paper, we study the scalar sector of the quasinormal modes of charged general relativistic, static, and spherically symmetric black holes coupled to nonlinear electrodynamics and embedded in a class of scalar-tensor theories. We find that for a certain domain of the parametric space, there exists unstable quasinormal modes. The presence of instabilities implies the existence of scalar-tensor black holes with primary hair that bifurcate from the embedded general relativistic black-hole solutions at critical values of the parameters corresponding to the static zero modes. We prove that such scalar-tensor black holes really exist by solving the full system of scalar-tensor field equations for the static, spherically symmetric case. The obtained solutions for the hairy black holes are nonunique, and they are in one-to-one correspondence with the bounded states of the potential governing the linear perturbations of the scalar field. The stability of the nonunique hairy black holes is also examined, and we find that the solutions for which the scalar field has zeros are unstable against radial perturbations. The paper ends with a discussion of possible formulations of a new classification conjecture.