Riesz--Laurent representation of black-hole scattering and sourced response at exceptional points

At a black-hole exceptional point (EP), two quasinormal modes coalesce and their separate residues become ill-conditioned. Rather than postulating a near-degenerate modal fit, we derive the response constructively from the complex-scaled Regge–Wheeler–Zerilli resolvent, treating the modes as one isolated rank-two Riesz cluster. Its zeroth and first contour moments determine an exact pair resolvent on both sides of, and at, the EP, without labeling the individual modes or constructing a normalized Jordan chain. At a second-order EP, these moments determine the simple- and double-pole Laurent operators. Although the modal decomposition is singular, fixed-real-frequency transmission and the greybody factor remain real-analytic through the EP, provided that the cluster remains isolated, the complementary resolvent is regular, and no pole reaches the physical axis. Source–observer matrix elements of the Laurent operators define finite, normalization-independent amplitudes and fix both the constant and linear-in-time terms in the causal ringdown. Their equality with the coefficients from the Jost double-zero expansion shows that they are operator-defined coefficients of the specified physical response, rather than fitting parameters. Thus two cluster moments provide mode-label-free data from which both scattering and driven responses follow.