Lang Cheng, Xiaobo Guo, Yuhan Li, Jun Tao, Peng Wang

Exceptional points (EPs) in quasinormal mode (QNM) spectra are non-Hermitian degeneracies at which both the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions coalesce. In this paper, we identify an EP in the scalar QNM spectrum of hairy black holes in the Einstein-Maxwell-scalar theory by scanning the parameter space. We then investigate its implications for ringdown signals by extracting QNMs from time-domain waveforms. Our results show that an EP ansatz, which includes a resonant contribution containing a term linear in time, provides a more robust description of ringdown at the EP than the standard ansatz based on a superposition of independent damped modes. In particular, it captures the resonant contribution associated with spectral coalescence more naturally and enables a more reliable extraction from the ringdown signal.