119230204
TESTING ALTERNATIVE THEORIES OF GRAVITY USING THE SUN
We propose a new approach to test possible corrections to Newtonian gravity using solar physics. The high accuracy of current solar models and new precise observations allow us to constrain corrections to standard gravity at unprecedented levels. Our case study is Eddington-inspired gravity, an attractive modified theory of gravity which results in non-singular cosmology and collapse. The theory is equivalent to standard gravity in vacuum, but it sensibly differs from it within matter. For instance, it affects the evolution and the equilibrium structure of the Sun, giving different core temperature profiles, and deviations in the observed acoustic modes and in solar neutrino fluxes. Comparing the predictions from a modified solar model with observations, we constrain the coupling parameter of the theory, |? g | 3 ? 105 m5 s?2 kg?1. Our results show that the Sun can be used to efficiently constrain alternative theories of gravity.
119119822
Partially massless gravitons do not destroy general relativity black holes
Recent nonlinear completions of Fierz-Pauli theory for a massive spin-2 field include nonlinear massive gravity and bimetric theories. The spectrum of black-hole solutions in these theories is rich, and comprises the same vacuum solutions of Einstein's gravity enlarged to include a cosmological constant. It was recently shown that Schwarzschild (de Sitter) black holes in these theories are generically unstable against spherical perturbations. Here we show that a notable exception is partially massless gravity, where the mass of the graviton is fixed in terms of the cosmological constant by \mu^2=2\Lambda/3 and a new gauge invariance emerges. We find that general-relativity black holes are stable in this limit. Remarkably, the spectrum of massive gravitational perturbations is isospectral.
122369180
Gravitational-wave signature of a thin-shell gravastar
We discuss how the emission of gravitational waves by ultra-compact objects can be qualitatively different depending on the presence or absence of an event horizon. Our case study are nonrotating thin-shell gravastars. The model has an infinitely thin shell with finite tension separating a de Sitter interior and a Schwarzschild exterior. The shell can be located arbitrarily close to the would-be event horizon, so a gravastar might seem indistinguishable from a black hole when tests are only performed on its external metric. We discuss gravitational perturbations of thin-shell gravastars and show that the spectrum of axial and polar quasinormal modes is completely different from that of a Schwarzschild black hole, even in the limit when the surface redshift becomes infinite. Furthermore, we study gravitational wave emission from the quasi-circular extreme mass ratio inspiral of compact objects of mass m0 into massive thin-shell gravastars of mass M ? m0. The power radiated in gravitational waves during the inspiral shows distinctive peaks corresponding to the excitation of the polar oscillation modes of the gravastar. The frequency of these peaks usually depends on the equation of state, but for ultra-compact gravastars it typically lies within the optimal sensitivity bandwidth of LISA, providing a very specific signature of the horizonless nature of the central object.
119228435
Massive spin-2 fields on black hole spacetimes: Instability of the Schwarzschild and Kerr solutions and bounds on the graviton mass
Massive bosonic fields of arbitrary spin are predicted by general extensions of the Standard Model. It has been recently shown that there exists a family of bimetric theories of gravity - including massive gravity - which are free of Boulware-Deser ghosts at the nonlinear level. This opens up the possibility to describe consistently the dynamics of massive spin-2 particles in a gravitational field. Within this context, we develop the study of massive spin-2 fluctuations - including massive gravitons - around Schwarzschild and slowly-rotating Kerr black holes. Our work has two important outcomes. First, we show that the Schwarzschild geometry is linearly unstable for small tensor masses, against a spherically symmetric mode. Second, we provide solid evidence that the Kerr geometry is also generically unstable, both against the spherical mode and against long-lived superradiant modes. In the absence of nonlinear effects, the observation of spinning black holes bounds the graviton mass to be smaller than 5x10^{-23} eV.
118714531
Infrared behavior of scalar condensates in effective holographic theories
A bstractWe investigate the infrared behavior of the spectrum of scalar-dressed, asymptotically Anti de Sitter (AdS) black brane (BB) solutions of effective holographic models. These solutions describe scalar condensates in the dual field theories. We show that for zero charge density the ground state of these BBs must be degenerate with the AdS vacuum, must satisfy conformal boundary conditions for the scalar field and it is isolated from the continuous part of the spectrum. When a finite charge density is switched on, the ground state is not anymore isolated and the degeneracy is removed. Depending on the coupling functions, the new ground state may possibly be energetically preferred with respect to the extremal Reissner-Nordstrom AdS BB. We derive several properties of BBs near extremality and at finite temperature. As a check and illustration of our results we derive and discuss several analytic and numerical, BB solutions of Einstein-scalar-Maxwell AdS gravity with different coupling functions and different potentials. We also discuss how our results can be used for understanding holographic quantum critical points, in particular their stability and the associated quantum phase transitions leading to superconductivity or hyperscaling violation.
118606173
Scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational perturbations of Kerr-Newman black holes in the slow-rotation limit
In Einstein-Maxwell theory, according to classic uniqueness theorems, the most general stationary black-hole solution is the axisymmetric Kerr-Newman metric, which is defined by three parameters: mass, spin and electric charge. The radial and angular dependence of gravitational and electromagnetic perturbations in the Kerr-Newman geometry do not seem to be separable. In this paper we circumvent this problem by studying scalar, electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations of Kerr-Newman black holes in the slow-rotation limit. We extend (and provide details of) the analysis presented in a recent Letter [arXiv:1304.1160]. Working at linear order in the spin, we present the first detailed derivation of the axial and polar perturbation equations in the gravito-electromagnetic case, and we compute the corresponding quasinormal modes for any value of the electric charge. Our study is the first self-consistent stability analysis of the Kerr-Newman metric, and in principle it can be extended to any order in the small rotation parameter. We find numerical evidence that the axial and polar sectors are isospectral at first order in the spin, and speculate on the possible implications of this result.
117701648
Search for $p \bar{p} \rightarrow WZ \rightarrow l\nu_l b \bar{b}$ signal with the CDF experiment at Tevatron
123140529
DoI position resolution in a continuous LaBr3(Ce) scintillation crystal for γ-ray imaging
A Monte Carlo simulation of a 50 mm × 50 mm × 4 mm continuous crystal has been developed to investigate the correlation between the scintillation light width ( σ ) and the Depth of Interaction ( DoI ) within the crystal. Our studies are based on a LaBr 3 (Ce) crystal, in order to take advantage of its high light yield to reduce the statistic uncertainties on the estimators of the σ . The first one, the standard deviation of the light distribution, has demonstrated a poor, though linear, correlation to DoI , that is not experimentally detectable. Otherwise, the second estimator, N I , is the ratio of the total number of photoelectrons to the maximum number of photoelectrons collected from a single anode, in a scintillation event. N I has been found to have the best correlation to DoI , that provides 2 mm resolution.