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.
119259706
Holography of charged dilatonic black branes at finite temperature
We investigate bulk and holographic features of finite-temperature black brane solutions of 4D anti-de Sitter Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton-gravity (EMDG). We construct, numerically, black branes endowed with non trivial scalar hairs for broad classes of EMDG. We consider both exponential and power-law forms for the coupling functions, as well as several charge configurations: purely electric, purely magnetic and dyonic solutions. At finite temperature the field theory holographically dual to these black brane solutions has a rich and interesting phenomenology reminiscent of electron motion in metals: phase transitions triggered by nonvanishing VEV of scalar operators, non-monotonic behavior of the electric conductivities as function of the frequency and of the temperature, Hall effect and sharp synchrotron resonances of the conductivity in presence of a magnetic field. Conversely, in the zero temperature limit the conductivities for these models show a universal behavior. The optical conductivity has a power-law behavior as a function of the frequency, whereas the DC conductivity is suppressed at small temperatures.
36723416
Gravitational wave signatures of the absence of an event horizon: Nonradial oscillations of a thin-shell gravastar
Gravitational waves from compact objects provide information about their structure, probing deep into strong-gravity regions. Here we illustrate how the presence or absence of an event horizon can produce qualitative differences in the gravitational waves emitted by ultracompact objects. In order to set up a straw-man ultracompact object with no event horizon, but which is otherwise almost identical to a black hole, we consider a nonrotating thin-shell model inspired by Mazur and Mottola's gravastar, which has a Schwarzschild exterior, a de Sitter interior and an infinitely thin shell with finite tension separating the two regions. As viewed from the external space-time, the shell can be located arbitrarily close to the Schwarzschild radius, so a gravastar might seem indistinguishable from a black hole when tests are only performed on its external metric. We study the linearized dynamics of the system, and, in particular, the junction conditions connecting internal and external gravitational perturbations. As a first application of the formalism we compute polar and axial oscillation modes of a thin-shell gravastar. We show that the quasinormal mode spectrum is completely different from that of a black hole, even in the limit when the surface redshift becomes infinite. Polar quasinormal modes depend on the equation of state of matter on the shell and can be used to distinguish between different gravastar models. Our calculations suggest that low-compactness gravastars could be unstable when the sound speed on the shell v_s/c ≳ 0.92.
119179934
Phase transitions between Reissner-Nordstrom and dilatonic black holes in 4D AdS spacetime
We study Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity models in four-dimensional antide Sitter (AdS) spacetime which admit the Reissner-Nordstrom (RN) black hole solution. We show that below a critical temperature the AdS-RN solution becomes unstable against scalar perturbations and the gravitational system undergoes a phase transition. We show using numerical calculations that the new phase is a charged dilatonic black hole. Using the AdS/CFT correspondence we discuss the phase transition in the dual field theory both for non-vanishing temperatures and in the extremal limit. The extremal solution has a Lifshitz scaling symmetry. We discuss the optical conductivity in the new dual phase and find interesting behavior at low frequencies where it shows a “Drude peak”. The resistivity varies with temperature in a non-monotonic way and displays a minimum at low temperatures which is reminiscent of the celebrated Kondo effect.
118397658
Anti de Sitter black holes and branes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity: perturbations, stability and the hydrodynamic modes
Dynamical Chern-Simons (DCS) theory is an extension of General Relativity in which the gravitational field is coupled to a scalar field through a parity violating term. We study perturbations of anti-de Sitter black holes and branes in such a theory, and show that the relevant equations reduce to a set of coupled ODEs which can be solved efficiently through a series expansion. We prove numerically that black holes and branes in DCS gravity are stable against gravitational and scalar perturbations in the entire parameter space. Furthermore, by applying the AdS/CFT duality, were late black hole perturbations to hydrodynamic quantities in the dual field theory, which is a (2 + 1)-dimensional isotropic fluid with broken spatial parity. The Chern-Simons term does not affect the entropy to viscosity ratio and the relaxation time, but instead quantities that enter the shear mode at order q4 in the small momentum limit, for example the Hall viscosity and other quantities related to second and third order hydrodynamics. We provide explicit corrections to the gravitational hydrodynamic mode to first relevant order in the couplings.
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.
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.
56041533
GEMS: Underwater spectrometer for long-term radioactivity measurements
Abstract GEMS (Gamma Energy Marine Spectrometer) is a prototype of an autonomous radioactivity sensor for underwater measurements, developed in the framework for a development of a submarine telescope for neutrino detection (KM3NeT Design Study Project). The spectrometer is highly sensitive to gamma rays produced by 40 K decays but it can detect other natural (e.g., 238 U, 232 Th) and anthropogenic radio-nuclides (e.g., 137 Cs). GEMS was firstly tested and calibrated in the laboratory using known sources and it was successfully deployed for a long-term (6 months) monitoring at a depth of 3200 m in the Ionian Sea (Capo Passero, offshore Eastern Sicily). The instrument recorded data for the whole deployment period within the expected specifications. This monitoring provided, for the first time, a continuous time-series of radioactivity in deep-sea.