In the class of vacuum Petrov type D spacetimes with cosmological constant, which includes the Kerr-(A)dS black hole as a particular case, we find a set of four-dimensional operators that, when composed off shell with the Dirac, Maxwell and linearized gravity equations, give a system of equations for spin weighted scalars associated to the linear fields, that decouple on shell. Using these operator relations we give compact reconstruction formulae for solutions of the original spinor and tensor field equations in terms of solutions of the decoupled scalar equations. We also analyze the role of Killing spinors and Killing-Yano tensors in the spin weight zero equations and, in the case of spherical symmetry, we compare our four-dimensional formulation with the standard 2+2 decomposition and particularize to the Schwarzschild-(A)dS black hole. Our results uncover a pattern that generalizes a number of previous results on Teukolsky-like equations and Debye potentials for higher spin fields.

We show that a spacetime satisfying the linearized vacuum Einstein equations around a type D background is generically of type I, and that the splittings of the Principal Null Directions (PNDs) and of the degenerate eigenvalue of the Weyl tensor are non analytic functions of the perturbation parameter of the metric. This provides a gauge invariant characterization of the effect of the perturbation on the underlying geometry, without appealing to differential curvature invariants. This is of particular interest for the Schwarzschild solution, for which there are no signatures of the even perturbations on the algebraic curvature invariants. We also show that, unlike the general case, the unstable even modes of the Schwarzschild naked singularity deforms the Weyl tensor into a type II one.

We present weighted covariant derivatives and wave operators for perturbations of certain algebraically special Einstein spacetimes in arbitrary dimensions, under which the Teukolsky and related equations become weighted wave equations. We show that the higher dimensional generalization of the principal null directions are weighted conformal Killing vectors with respect to the modified covariant derivative. We also introduce a modified Laplace-de Rham-like operator acting on tensor-valued differential forms, and show that the wave-like equations are, at the linear level, appropriate projections off shell of this operator acting on the curvature tensor; the projection tensors being made out of weighted conformal Killing-Yano tensors. We give off shell operator identities that map the Einstein and Maxwell equations into weighted scalar equations, and using adjoint operators we construct solutions of the original field equations in a compact form from solutions of the wave-like equations. We study the extreme and zero boost weight cases; extreme boost corresponding to perturbations of Kundt spacetimes (which includes Near Horizon Geometries of extreme black holes), and zero boost to static black holes in arbitrary dimensions. In 1 4 dimensions our results apply to Einstein spacetimes of Petrov type D and make use of weighted Killing spinors.

The static region outside the event horizon of an asymptotically anti de Sitter black hole has a conformal timelike boundary I on which boundary conditions have to be imposed for the evolution of linear fields from initial data to be a well posed problem. Only homogeneous Dirichlet, Neumann or Robin conditions preserve the action of the background isometry group on the solution space. We study the case in which the modal decomposition of the linear field leads to potentials not diverging at the conformal timelike boundary. We prove that there is always an instability if Robin boundary conditions with large enough γ (the quotient between the values of the derivative of the field and the field at the boundary) are allowed. We explain the origin of this instability, show that for modes with nonnegative potentials there is a single unstable state and prove a number of properties of this state. Although our results apply in general to 1+1 wave equations on a half infinite domain with a potential that is not singular at the boundary, our motivation is to analyze the gravitational stability of the four dimensional Schwarzschild anti de Sitter black holes (SAdS4) in the context of the black hole non modal linear stability program initiated in Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 191101 (2014), and the related supersymmetric type of duality exchanging odd and even modes. We prove that this symmetry is broken except when a combination of Dirichlet conditions in the even sector and a particular Robin condition in the odd sector is enforced, or viceversa, and that only the first of these two choices leads to a stable dynamics. CONTENTS