Third-and-a-half order post-Newtonian equations of motion for relativistic compact binaries using the strong field point particle limit

We report our rederivation of the equations of motion for relativistic compact binaries through the third-and-a-half post-Newtonian (3.5 PN) order approximation to general relativity using the strong field point particle limit to describe self-gravitating stars instead of the Dirac delta functional. The computation is done in harmonic coordinates. Our equations of motion describe the orbital motion of the binary consisting of spherically symmetric non-rotating stars. The resulting equations of motion fully agree with the 3.5 PN equations of motion derived in the previous works. We also show that the locally defined energy of the star has a simple relation with its mass up to the 3.5 PN order.Comment: 38 pages, no figures. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Energy in ghost-free massive gravity theory

The detailed calculations of the energy in the ghost-free massive gravity theory is presented. The energy is defined in the standard way within the canonical approach, but to evaluate it requires resolving the Hamiltonian constraints, which are known, in general, only implicitly. Fortunately, the constraints can be explicitly obtained and resolved in the spherically symmetric sector, which allows one to evaluate the energy. It turns out that the energy is positive for globally regular and asymptotically flat fields constituting the "physical sector" of the theory. In other cases the energy can be negative and even unbounded from below, which suggests that the theory could be still plagued with ghost instability. However, a detailed inspection reveals that the corresponding solutions of the constraints are either not globally regular or not asymptotically flat. Such solutions cannot describe initial data triggering ghost instability of the physical sector. This allows one to conjecture that the physical sector could actually be protected from the instability by a potential barrier separating it from negative energy states.Comment: 35 pages, minor improvements, an appendix adde

Three dimensional numerical relativity: the evolution of black holes

We report on a new 3D numerical code designed to solve the Einstein equations for general vacuum spacetimes. This code is based on the standard 3+1 approach using cartesian coordinates. We discuss the numerical techniques used in developing this code, and its performance on massively parallel and vector supercomputers. As a test case, we present evolutions for the first 3D black hole spacetimes. We identify a number of difficulties in evolving 3D black holes and suggest approaches to overcome them. We show how special treatment of the conformal factor can lead to more accurate evolution, and discuss techniques we developed to handle black hole spacetimes in the absence of symmetries. Many different slicing conditions are tested, including geodesic, maximal, and various algebraic conditions on the lapse. With current resolutions, limited by computer memory sizes, we show that with certain lapse conditions we can evolve the black hole to about $t=50M$, where $M$ is the black hole mass. Comparisons are made with results obtained by evolving spherical initial black hole data sets with a 1D spherically symmetric code. We also demonstrate that an ``apparent horizon locking shift'' can be used to prevent the development of large gradients in the metric functions that result from singularity avoiding time slicings. We compute the mass of the apparent horizon in these spacetimes, and find that in many cases it can be conserved to within about 5\% throughout the evolution with our techniques and current resolution.Comment: 35 pages, LaTeX with RevTeX 3.0 macros. 27 postscript figures taking 7 MB of space, uuencoded and gz-compressed into a 2MB uufile. Also available at http://jean-luc.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Papers/ and mpeg simulations at http://jean-luc.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Movies/ Submitted to Physical Review

Quantum fluctuations as deviation from classical dynamics of ensemble of trajectories parameterized by unbiased hidden random variable

A quantization method based on replacement of c-number by c-number parameterized by an unbiased hidden random variable is developed. In contrast to canonical quantization, the replacement has straightforward physical interpretation as statistical modification of classical dynamics of ensemble of trajectories, and implies a unique operator ordering. We then apply the method to develop quantum measurement without wave function collapse \'a la pilot-wave theory.Comment: 14 pages, accepted in Physica

Transient analysis of arm locking controller

Arm locking is one of the key technologies to suppress the laser phase noise in spaced-based gravitational waves observatories. Since arm locking was proposed, phase margin criterion was always used as the fundamental design strategy for the controller development. In this paper, we find that this empirical method from engineering actually cannot guarantee the arm locking stability. Therefore, most of the advanced arm locking controllers reported so far may have instable problems. After comprehensive analysis of the single arm locking's transient responses, strict analytical stability criterions are summarized for the first time. These criterions are then generalized to dual arm locking, modified-dual arm locking and common arm locking, and special considerations for the design of arm locking controllers in different architectures are also discussed. It is found that PI controllers can easily meet our stability criterions in most of the arm locking systems. Using a simple high gain PI controller, it is possible to suppress the laser phase noise by 5 orders of magnitude within the science band. Our stability criterions can also be used in other feedback systems, where several modules with different delays are connected in parallel.Comment: 24 pages, 24 figure