The quasinormal mode spectrum of black holes is unstable against small modifications of the radial potential describing massless perturbations. We study how these small modifications affect the convergence of the quasinormal mode expansion and the mode excitation by computing the mode amplitudes from first principles, without relying on any fitting procedure. We show that the decomposition of the prompt ringdown waveform is not unique: small modifications in the radial potential produce new quasinormal mode “basis sets” that can improve the convergence of the quasinormal mode expansion, even capturing the late-time tail. We also study avoided crossings and exceptional points of the Kerr and Kerr–de Sitter spectrum. We show that while the mode amplitude can be resonantly excited, modes that exhibit avoided crossing destructively interfere with each other, so that the prompt ringdown waveform remains stable.

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• Classical black holes
• General relativity
• Gravitation
• Gravitational waves