  We provide simple and accurate analytical expressions for the Regge poles of
the Schwarzschild black hole. This is achieved by using third-order WKB
approximations to solve the radial wave equations for spins 0, 1 and 2. These
results permit us to obtain analytically the dispersion relation and the
damping of the "surface waves" lying on the photon sphere of the Schwarzschild
black hole and which generate the weakly damped quasinormal modes of its
spectrum. Our results could be helpful in order to simplify considerably the
description of wave scattering from the Schwarzschild black hole as well as the
analysis of the gravitational radiation created in many black hole processes.
Furthermore, the existence of dispersion relations for the photons propagating
close to the photon sphere could have also important consequences in the
context of gravitational lensing.
