Massive fields affected by echoes: New physics vs. astrophysical environment

Abstract Unlike the perturbations of massless fields, the asymptotic tails of massive fields exhibit oscillations and decay slowly, following a power-law envelope. In this work, considering various scenarios admitting (either fundamental or effective) massive scalar and gravitational fields, we demonstrate that bump deformations in the effective potential, either in the near-horizon or far-field regions, modify these asymptotic oscillatory tails. Specifically, the power-law envelope transitions to a more complex oscillatory pattern, which cannot be easily fitted to a simple formula. This behavior is qualitatively different from the echoes of massless fields, which appear mainly during the quasinormal ringing stage and are considerably suppressed at the asymptotic tails. We show that in some models echoes may considerably amplify the signal at the stage of asymptotic tails.