Probing the signature of axions through the quasinormal modes of black holes

The axion-photon coupling allows the existence of a magnetically and electrically charged black hole (BH) solution endowed with a pseudo-scalar hair. For the Reissner-Nordstrom BH with a given total charge and mass, it is known that the quasinormal modes (QNMs) are independent of the mixture between the magnetic and electric charges due to the presence of electric-magnetic duality. We show that the BH with an axion hair breaks this degeneracy by realizing nontrivial QNMs that depend on the ratio between the magnetic and total charges. Thus, the upcoming observations of BH QNMs through gravitational waves offer an exciting possibility for probing the existence of both magnetic monopoles and the axion coupled to photons.