Search results for "Relativity"
showing 10 items of 1213 documents
Quantum corrections to inflation: the importance of RG-running and choosing the optimal RG-scale
2017
We demonstrate the importance of correctly implementing RG running and choosing the RG scale when calculating quantum corrections to inflaton dynamics. We show that such corrections are negligible for single-field inflation, in the sense of not altering the viable region in the ${n}_{s}\ensuremath{-}r$ plane, when imposing Planck constraints on ${A}_{s}$. Surprisingly, this also applies, in a nontrivial way, for an inflaton coupled to additional spectator degrees of freedom. The result relies on choosing the renormalization scale (pseudo-)optimally, thereby avoiding unphysical large logarithmic corrections to the Friedmann equations and large running of the couplings. We find that the viabl…
'School adopts an experiment': the magnetic levitation of superconductors
2010
The event 'School adopts an experiment' is an event targeted at high schools and secondary schools. It is based on a tight and direct collaboration between researchers and school students and teachers. Several schools were involved in the event by 'adopting' an experiment in physics research laboratories. Groups of selected students were first trained by university researchers, then they demonstrated the experiments to other students and teachers during the event. Students who adopted an experiment acquired knowledge of the subjects connected with the experiment in a most impressive way compared with the usual didactics at school. Further positive points were: (i) to establish a close and d…
Structure and stability of traversable thin-shell wormholes in Palatini f(R) gravity
2020
We study the structure and stability of traversable wormholes built as (spherically symmetric) thin shells in the context of Palatini f(R) gravity. Using a suitable junction formalism for these theories we find that the effective number of degrees of freedom on the shell is reduced to a single one, which fixes the equation of state to be that of massless stress-energy fields, contrary to the general relativistic and metric f(R) cases. Another major difference is that the surface energy density threading the thin shell, needed in order to sustain the wormhole, can take any sign and may even vanish, depending on the desired features of the corresponding solutions. We illustrate our results by…
Quasistationary solutions of scalar fields around collapsing self-interacting boson stars
2017
There is increasing numerical evidence that scalar fields can form long-lived quasibound states around black holes. Recent perturbative and numerical relativity calculations have provided further confirmation in a variety of physical systems, including both static and accreting black holes, and collapsing fermionic stars. In this work, we investigate this issue yet again in the context of gravitationally unstable boson stars leading to black-hole formation. We build a large sample of spherically symmetric initial models, both stable and unstable, incorporating a self-interaction potential with a quartic term. The three different outcomes of unstable models, namely, migration to the stable b…
Application of dictionary learning to denoise LIGO’s blip noise transients
2020
Data streams of gravitational-wave detectors are polluted by transient noise features, or ``glitches,'' of instrumental and environmental origin. In this work we investigate the use of total variation methods and learned dictionaries to mitigate the effect of those transients in the data. We focus on a specific type of transient, ``blip" glitches, as this is the most common type of glitch present in the LIGO detectors and their waveforms are easy to identify. We randomly select 100 blip glitches scattered in the data from advanced LIGO's O1 run, as provided by the citizen-science project Gravity Spy. Our results show that dictionary-learning methods are a valid approach to model and subtrac…
Quantum-corrected rotating black holes and naked singularities in ( 2+1 ) dimensions
2019
We analytically investigate the perturbative effects of a quantum conformally coupled scalar field on rotating (2+1)-dimensional black holes and naked singularities. In both cases we obtain the quantum-backreacted metric analytically. In the black hole case, we explore the quantum corrections on different regions of relevance for a rotating black hole geometry. We find that the quantum effects lead to a growth of both the event horizon and the ergosphere, as well as to a reduction of the angular velocity compared to their corresponding unperturbed values. Quantum corrections also give rise to the formation of a curvature singularity at the Cauchy horizon and show no evidence of the appearan…
Numerical evolutions of spherical Proca stars
2017
Vector boson stars, or $\textit{Proca stars}$, have been recently obtained as fully non-linear numerical solutions of the Einstein-(complex)-Proca system. These are self-gravitating, everywhere non-singular, horizonless Bose-Einstein condensates of a massive vector field, which resemble in many ways, but not all, their scalar cousins, the well-known (scalar) $\textit{boson stars}$. In this paper we report fully-non linear numerical evolutions of Proca stars, focusing on the spherically symmetric case, with the goal of assessing their stability and the end-point of the evolution of the unstable stars. Previous results from linear perturbation theory indicate the separation between stable and…
Core-collapse supernovae: Reflections and directions
2012
Core-collapse supernovae are among the most fascinating phenomena in astrophysics and provide a formidable challenge for theoretical investigation. They mark the spectacular end of the lives of massive stars and, in an explosive eruption, release as much energy as the sun produces during its whole life. A better understanding of the astrophysical role of supernovae as birth sites of neutron stars, black holes, and heavy chemical elements, and more reliable predictions of the observable signals from stellar death events are tightly linked to the solution of the longstanding puzzle of how collapsing stars achieve explosion. In this article our current knowledge of the processes that contribut…
Spherical symmetric dust collapse in a Vector-Tensor gravity
2018
There is a viable vector-tensor gravity (VTG) theory, whose vector field produces repulsive forces leading to important effects. In the background universe, the effect of these forces is an accelerated expansion identical to that produced by vacuum energy (cosmological constant). Here, we prove that another of these effects arises for great enough collapsing masses which lead to Schwarzschild black holes and singularities in general relativity (GR). For these masses, pressure becomes negligible against gravitational attraction and the complete collapse cannot be stopped in the context of GR; however, in VTG, a strong gravitational repulsion could stop the falling of the shells towards the s…
New method to observe gravitational waves emitted by core collapse supernovae
2018
While gravitational waves have been detected from mergers of binary black holes and binary neutron stars, signals from core collapse supernovae, the most energetic explosions in the modern Universe, have not been detected yet. Here we present a new method to analyse the data of the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA network to enhance the detection efficiency of this category of signals. The method takes advantage of a peculiarity of the gravitational wave signal emitted in the core collapse supernova and it is based on a classification procedure of the time-frequency images of the network data performed by a convolutional neural network trained to perform the task to recognize the signal. We validate …