Conformal field theory interpretation of black hole quasinormal modes.

We obtain exact expressions for the quasinormal modes of various spin for the Bañados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black hole. These modes determine the relaxation time of black hole perturbations. Exact agreement is found between the quasinormal frequencies and the location of the poles of the retarded correlation function of the corresponding perturbations in the dual conformal field theory. This then provides a new quantitative test of the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence.