118376658
Gravitational signature of Schwarzschild black holes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity
Dynamical Chern-Simons gravity is an extension of general relativity in which the gravitational field is coupled to a scalar field through a parity-violating Chern-Simons term. In this framework, we study perturbations of spherically symmetric black hole spacetimes, assuming that the background scalar field vanishes. Our results suggest that these spacetimes are stable, and small perturbations die away as a ringdown. However, in contrast to standard general relativity, the gravitational waveforms are also driven by the scalar field. Thus, the gravitational oscillation modes of black holes carry imprints of the coupling to the scalar field. This is a smoking gun for Chern-Simons theory and could be tested with gravitational-wave detectors, such as LIGO or LISA. For negative values of the coupling constant, ghosts are known to arise, and we explicitly verify their appearance numerically. Our results are validated using both time evolution and frequency domain methods.
118423061
Are black holes in alternative theories serious astrophysical candidates? The Case for Einstein-Dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet black holes
It is generally accepted that Einstein's theory will get some as yet unknown corrections, possibly large in the strong-field regime. An ideal place to look for these modifications is in the vicinities of compact objects such as black holes. Here, we study dilatonic black holes, which arise in the framework of Gauss-Bonnet couplings and one-loop corrected four-dimensional effective theory of heterotic superstrings at low energies. These are interesting objects as a prototype for alternative, yet well-behaved gravity theories: they evade the 'no-hair' theorem of general relativity but were proven to be stable against radial perturbations. We investigate the viability of these black holes as astrophysical objects and try to provide some means to distinguish them from black holes in general relativity. We start by extending previous works and establishing the stability of these black holes against axial perturbations. We then look for solutions of the field equations describing slowly rotating black holes and study geodesic motion around this geometry. Depending on the values of mass, dilaton charge, and angular momentum of the solution, one can have differences in the innermost-stable-circular-orbit location and orbital frequency, relative to black holes in general relativity. In the most favorable cases, the difference amounts tomore » a few percent. Given the current state-of-the-art, we discuss the difficulty of distinguishing the correct theory of gravity from electromagnetic observations or even with gravitational-wave detectors.« less
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.
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.
119244694
Tidal acceleration of black holes and superradiance
Tidal effects have long ago locked the Moon in a synchronous rotation with the Earth and progressively increase the Earth–Moon distance. This 'tidal acceleration' hinges on dissipation. Binaries containing black holes may also be tidally accelerated, dissipation being caused by the event horizon—a flexible, viscous one-way membrane. In fact, this process is known for many years under a different guise: superradiance. Here, we provide compelling evidence for a strong connection between tidal acceleration and superradiant scattering around spinning black holes. In general relativity, tidal acceleration is obscured by the gravitational-wave emission. However, when coupling to light scalar degrees of freedom is allowed, an induced dipole moment produces a 'polarization acceleration', which might be orders of magnitude stronger than tidal quadrupolar effects. Consequences for optical and gravitational-wave observations are intriguing and it is not impossible that imprints of such a mechanism have already been observed.
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.
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.
117701648
Search for $p \bar{p} \rightarrow WZ \rightarrow l\nu_l b \bar{b}$ signal with the CDF experiment at Tevatron