Search results for "General relativity and quantum cosmology"
showing 10 items of 941 documents
The overtone level spacing of a black hole quasinormal frequencies: a fingerprint of a local $SL(2,\mathbb{R})$ symmetry
2023
The imaginary part of the quasinormal frequencies spectrum for a static and spherically symmetric black hole is analytically known to be equally spaced, both for the highly damped and the weakly damped families of quasinormal modes. Some interesting attempts have been made in the last twenty years to understand in simple ways this level spacing for the only case of highly damped quasinormal frequencies. Here, we show that the overtone level spacing, for both the highly damped and weakly damped families of quasinormal modes, can simply be understood as a fingerprint of a hidden local $SL(2,\mathbb{R})$ symmetry, near different regions of the black hole spacetime, i.e. the near-horizon and th…
Painlevé-II approach to binary black hole merger dynamics: universality from integrability
2022
The binary black hole merger waveform is both simple and universal. Adopting an effective asymptotic description of the dynamics, we aim at accounting for such universality in terms of underlying (effective) integrable structures. More specifically, under a ``wave-mean flow'' perspective, we propose that fast degrees of freedom corresponding to the observed waveform would be subject to effective linear dynamics, propagating on a slowly evolving background subject to (effective) non-linear integrable dynamics. The Painlevé property of the latter would be implemented in terms of the so-called Painlevé-II transcendent, providing a structural link between i) orbital (in particular, EMRI) dynami…
Horizons in a binary black hole merger I: Geometry and area increase
2020
Recent advances in numerical relativity have revealed how marginally trapped surfaces behave when black holes merge. It is now known that interesting topological features emerge during the merger, and marginally trapped surfaces can have self-intersections. This paper presents the most detailed study yet of the physical and geometric aspects of this scenario. For the case of a head-on collision of non-spinning black holes, we study in detail the world tube formed by the evolution of marginally trapped surfaces. In the first of this two-part study, we focus on geometrical properties of the dynamical horizons, i.e. the world tube traced out by the time evolution of marginally outer trapped su…
On Einstein bilinear form
2012
From physical motivations and from geometrical interpretations of the Einstein equations, we give a justi cation of the non-triviality and non-degeneracy of Einstein bilinear form introduced in [1].
Search for intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo network
2019
Gravitational wave astronomy has been firmly established with the detection of gravitational waves from the merger of ten stellar mass binary black holes and a neutron star binary. This paper reports on the all-sky search for gravitational waves from intermediate mass black hole binaries in the first and second observing runs of the Advanced LIGO and Virgo network. The search uses three independent algorithms: two based on matched filtering of the data with waveform templates of gravitational wave signals from compact binaries, and a third, model-independent algorithm that employs no signal model for the incoming signal. No intermediate mass black hole binary event was detected in this sear…
All-sky search in early O3 LIGO data for continuous gravitational-wave signals from unknown neutron stars in binary systems
2021
Rapidly spinning neutron stars are promising sources of continuous gravitational waves. Detecting such a signal would allow probing of the physical properties of matter under extreme conditions. A significant fraction of the known pulsar population belongs to binary systems. Searching for unknown neutron stars in binary systems requires specialized algorithms to address unknown orbital frequency modulations. We present a search for continuous gravitational waves emitted by neutron stars in binary systems in early data from the third observing run of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors using the semicoherent, GPU-accelerated, binaryskyhough pipeline. The search analyzes the most s…
Airy-function approach to binary black hole merger waveforms: The fold-caustic diffraction model
2022
From numerical simulations of the Einstein equations, and also from gravitational wave observations, the gravitational wave signal from a binary black hole merger is seen to be simple and to possess certain universal features. The simplicity is somewhat surprising given that non-linearities of general relativity are thought to play an important role at the merger. The universal features include an increasing amplitude as we approach the merger, where transition from an oscillatory to a damped regime occurs in a pattern apparently oblivious to the initial conditions. We propose an Airy-function pattern to model the binary black hole (BBH) merger waveform, focusing on accounting for its simpl…
Upper limits on the isotropic gravitational-wave background from Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo's third observing run
2021
We report results of a search for an isotropic gravitational-wave background (GWB) using data from Advanced LIGO's and Advanced Virgo's third observing run (O3) combined with upper limits from the earlier O1 and O2 runs. Unlike in previous observing runs in the advanced detector era, we include Virgo in the search for the GWB. The results are consistent with uncorrelated noise, and therefore we place upper limits on the strength of the GWB. We find that the dimensionless energy density $\Omega_{\rm GW}\leq 5.8\times 10^{-9}$ at the 95% credible level for a flat (frequency-independent) GWB, using a prior which is uniform in the log of the strength of the GWB, with 99% of the sensitivity comi…
A strong electroweak phase transition from the inflaton field
2016
We study a singlet scalar extension of the Standard Model. The singlet scalar is coupled non-minimally to gravity and assumed to drive inflation, and also couple sufficiently strongly with the SM Higgs field in order to provide for a strong first order electroweak phase transition. Requiring the model to describe inflation successfully, be compatible with the LHC data, and yield a strong first order electroweak phase transition, we identify the regions of the parameter space where the model is viable. We also include a singlet fermion with scalar coupling to the singlet scalar to probe the sensitivity of the constraints on additional degrees of freedom and their couplings in the singlet sec…
Time-domain effective-one-body gravitational waveforms for coalescing compact binaries with nonprecessing spins, tides and self-spin effects
2018
We present TEOBResumS, a new effective-one-body (EOB) waveform model for nonprecessing (spin-aligned) and tidally interacting compact binaries.Spin-orbit and spin-spin effects are blended together by making use of the concept of centrifugal EOB radius. The point-mass sector through merger and ringdown is informed by numerical relativity (NR) simulations of binary black holes (BBH) computed with the SpEC and BAM codes. An improved, NR-based phenomenological description of the postmerger waveform is developed.The tidal sector of TEOBResumS describes the dynamics of neutron star binaries up to merger and incorporates a resummed attractive potential motivated by recent advances in the post-Newt…