Search results for "Gravitational wave"
showing 10 items of 193 documents
Astrophysical constraints on extended gravity models
2015
We investigate the propagation of gravitational waves in the context of fourth order gravity nonminimally coupled to a massive scalar field. Using the damping of the orbital period of coalescing stellar binary systems, we impose constraints on the free parameters of extended gravity models. In particular, we find that the variation of the orbital period is a function of three mass scales which depend on the free parameters of the model under consideration; we can constrain these mass scales from current observational data.
The First Three Seconds: a Review of Possible Expansion Histories of the Early Universe
2020
It is commonly assumed that the energy density of the Universe was dominated by radiation between reheating after inflation and the onset of matter domination 54,000 years later. While the abundance of light elements indicates that the Universe was radiation dominated during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN), there is scant evidence that the Universe was radiation dominated prior to BBN. It is therefore possible that the cosmological history was more complicated, with deviations from the standard radiation domination during the earliest epochs. Indeed, several interesting proposals regarding various topics such as the generation of dark matter, matter-antimatter asymmetry, gravitational waves,…
Constraints on Cosmic Strings Using Data from the Third Advanced LIGO–Virgo Observing Run
2021
We search for gravitational-wave signals produced by cosmic strings in the Advanced LIGO and Virgo full O3 data set. Search results are presented for gravitational waves produced by cosmic string loop features such as cusps, kinks and, for the first time, kink-kink collisions.cA template-based search for short-duration transient signals does not yield a detection. We also use the stochastic gravitational-wave background energy density upper limits derived from the O3 data to constrain the cosmic string tension, $G\mu$, as a function of the number of kinks, or the number of cusps, for two cosmic string loop distribution models.cAdditionally, we develop and test a third model which interpolat…
Lensing and dynamics of ultracompact bosonic stars
2017
Spherically symmetric bosonic stars are one of the few examples of gravitating solitons that are known to form dynamically, via a classical process of (incomplete) gravitational collapse. As stationary solutions of the Einstein--Klein-Gordon or the Einstein--Proca theory, bosonic stars may also become sufficiently compact to develop light rings and hence mimic, in principle, gravitational-wave observational signatures of black holes (BHs). In this paper, we discuss how these horizonless ultra-compact objects (UCOs) are actually distinct from BHs, both phenomenologically and dynamically. In the electromagnetic channel, the light ring associated phenomenology reveals remarkable lensing patter…
Gravitational waves in the presence of a cosmological constant
2011
We derive the effects of a non-zero cosmological constant $\Lambda$ on gravitational wave propagation in the linearized approximation of general relativity. In this approximation we consider the situation where the metric can be written as $g_{\mu\nu}= \eta_{\mu\nu}+ h_{\mu\nu}^\Lambda + h_{\mu\nu}^W$, $h_{\mu\nu}^{\Lambda,W}<< 1$, where $h_{\mu\nu}^{\Lambda}$ is the background perturbation and $h_{\mu\nu}^{W}$ is a modification interpretable as a gravitational wave. For $\Lambda \neq 0$ this linearization of Einstein equations is self-consistent only in certain coordinate systems. The cosmological Friedmann-Robertson-Walker coordinates do not belong to this class and the derived linearized…
Cosmological waveguides for gravitational waves
1997
We study the linearized equations describing the propagation of gravitational waves through dust. In the leading order of the WKB approximation, dust behaves as a non-dispersive, non-dissipative medium. Taking advantage of these features, we explore the possibility that a gravitational wave from a distant source gets trapped by the gravitational field of a long filament of galaxies of the kind seen in the large scale structure of the Universe. Such a waveguiding effect may lead to a huge magnification of the radiation from distant sources, thus lowering the sensitivity required for a successful detection of gravitational waves by detectors like VIRGO, LIGO and LISA.
On gravitational waves in Born-Infeld inspired non-singular cosmologies
2017
We study the evolution of gravitational waves for non-singular cosmological solutions within the framework of Born-Infeld inspired gravity theories, with special emphasis on the Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld theory. We review the existence of two types of non-singular cosmologies, namely bouncing and asymptotically Minkowski solutions, from a perspective that makes their features more apparent. We study in detail the propagation of gravitational waves near these non-singular solutions and carefully discuss the origin and severity of the instabilities and strong coupling problems that appear. We also investigate the role of the adiabatic sound speed of the matter sector in the regularisatio…
Probing the creatable character of perturbed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universes
2008
We discuss whether some perturbed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universes could be creatable, i. e., could have vanishing energy, linear momentum and angular momentum, as it could be expectable if the Universe arose as a quantum fluctuation. On account of previous results, the background is assumed to be either closed (with very small curvature) or flat. In the first case, fully arbitrary linear perturbations are considered; whereas in the flat case, it is assumed the existence of: (i) inflationary scalar perturbations, that is to say, Gaussian adiabatic scalar perturbations having an spectrum close to the Harrison-Zel'dovich one, and (ii) arbitrary tensor perturbations. We conclude that…
The THESEUS space mission concept: science case, design and expected performances
2018
THESEUS is a space mission concept aimed at exploiting Gamma-Ray Bursts for investigating the early Universe and at providing a substantial advancement of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics. These goals will be achieved through a unique combination of instruments allowing GRB and X-ray transient detection over a broad field of view (more than 1sr) with 0.5¿1 arcmin localization, an energy band extending from several MeV down to 0.3¿keV and high sensitivity to transient sources in the soft X-ray domain, as well as on-board prompt (few minutes) follow-up with a 0.7¿m class IR telescope with both imaging and spectroscopic capabilities. THESEUS will be perfectly suited for addressing …
Erratum: “Searches for Gravitational Waves from Known Pulsars at Two Harmonics in 2015–2017 LIGO Data” (2019, ApJ, 879, 10)
2019
Two analysis errors have been identified that affect the results for a handful of the high-value pulsars given in Table 1 of Abbott et al. (2019). One affects the Bayesian analysis for the five pulsars that glitched during the analysis period, and the other affects the 5n-vector analysis for J0711-6830. Updated results after correcting the errors are shown in Table 1, which now supersedes the results given for those pulsars in Table 1 of Abbott et al. (2019). Updated versions of figures can be seen in Figures 1-4. Bayesian analysis.-For the glitching pulsars, the signal phase evolution caused by the glitch was wrongly applied twice and was therefore not consistent with our expected model of…