397 research outputs found
Schwarzschild-like black holes: Light-like trajectories and massless scalar absorption
Black holes are among the most intriguing objects in nature. They are
believed to be fully described by General Relativity (GR), and the
astrophysical black holes are expected to belong to the Kerr family, obeying
the no-hair theorems. Alternative theories of gravity or parameterized
deviations of GR allow black hole solutions, which have additional parameters
other than mass and angular momentum. We analyze a Schwarzschild-like metric,
proposed by Johannsen and Psaltis, characterized by its mass and a deformation
parameter. We compute the absorption cross section of massless scalar waves for
different values of this deformation parameter and compare it with the
corresponding scalar absorption cross section of the Schwarzschild black hole.
We also present analytical approximations for the absorption cross section in
the high-frequency regime. We check the consistence of our results comparing
the numerical and analytical approaches, finding excellent agreement.Comment: 8 pages, 14 figure
Astrophysical signatures of boson stars: quasinormal modes and inspiral resonances
Compact bosonic field configurations, or boson stars, are promising dark
matter candidates which have been invoked as an alternative description for the
supermassive compact objects in active galactic nuclei. Boson stars can be
comparable in size and mass to supermassive black holes and they are hard to
distinguish by electromagnetic observations. However, boson stars do not
possess an event horizon and their global spacetime structure is different from
that of a black hole. This leaves a characteristic imprint in the
gravitational-wave emission, which can be used as a discriminant between black
holes and other horizonless compact objects. Here we perform a detailed study
of boson stars and their gravitational-wave signatures in a fully relativistic
setting, a study which was lacking in the existing literature in many respects.
We construct several fully relativistic boson star configurations, and we
analyze their geodesic structure and free oscillation spectra, or quasinormal
modes. We explore the gravitational and scalar response of boson star
spacetimes to an inspiralling stellar-mass object and compare it to its black
hole counterpart. We find that a generic signature of compact boson stars is
the resonant-mode excitation by a small compact object on stable quasi-circular
geodesic motion.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. v2: minor corrections, version to be published
in Phys. Rev. D. v3: final versio
Low-frequency absorption cross section of the electromagnetic waves for the extreme Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in higher dimensions
We investigate the low-frequency absorption cross section of the
electromagnetic waves for the extreme Reissner-Nordstrom black holes in higher
dimensions. We first construct the exact solutions to the relevant wave
equations in the zero-frequency limit. In most cases it is possible to use
these solutions to find the transmission coefficients of partial waves in the
low-frequency limit. We use these transmission coefficients to calculate the
low-frequency absorption cross section in five and six spacetime dimensions. We
find that this cross section is dominated by the modes with l=2 in the
spherical-harmonic expansion rather than those with l=1, as might have been
expected, because of the mixing between the electromagnetic and gravitational
waves. We also find an upper limit for the low-frequency absorption cross
section in dimensions higher than six.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, Phys. Rev. D (to appear
The Unruh effect and its applications
It has been thirty years since the discovery of the Unruh effect. It has
played a crucial role in our understanding that the particle content of a field
theory is observer dependent. This effect is important in its own right and as
a way to understand the phenomenon of particle emission from black holes and
cosmological horizons. Here, we review the Unruh effect with particular
emphasis to its applications. We also comment on a number of recent
developments and discuss some controversies. Effort is also made to clarify
what seems to be common misconceptions.Comment: 53 pages, 11 figures, submitted to Reviews of Modern Physic
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