Strains and Jets in Black Hole Fields

We study the behaviour of an initially spherical bunch of particles emitted along trajectories parallel to the symmetry axis of a Kerr black hole. We show that, under suitable conditions, curvature and inertial strains compete to generate jet-like structures.Comment: To appear in the Proceedings of the Spanish Relativity Meeting 2007 held in Tenerife (Spain) 3 Figure

Spinning test particles and clock effect in Kerr spacetime

We study the motion of spinning test particles in Kerr spacetime using the Mathisson-Papapetrou equations; we impose different supplementary conditions among the well known Corinaldesi-Papapetrou, Pirani and Tulczyjew's and analyze their physical implications in order to decide which is the most natural to use. We find that if the particle's center of mass world line, namely the one chosen for the multipole reduction, is a spatially circular orbit (sustained by the tidal forces due to the spin) then the generalized momentum $P$ of the test particle is also tangent to a spatially circular orbit intersecting the center of mass line at a point. There exists one such orbit for each point of the center of mass line where they intersect; although fictitious, these orbits are essential to define the properties of the spinning particle along its physical motion. In the small spin limit, the particle's orbit is almost a geodesic and the difference of its angular velocity with respect to the geodesic value can be of arbitrary sign, corresponding to the spin-up and spin-down possible alignment along the z-axis. We also find that the choice of the supplementary conditions leads to clock effects of substantially different magnitude. In fact, for co-rotating and counter-rotating particles having the same spin magnitude and orientation, the gravitomagnetic clock effect induced by the background metric can be magnified or inhibited and even suppressed by the contribution of the individual particle's spin. Quite surprisingly this contribution can be itself made vanishing leading to a clock effect undistiguishable from that of non spinning particles. The results of our analysis can be observationally tested.Comment: IOP macros, eps figures n. 12, to appear on Classical and Quantum Gravity, 200

Kerr metric, static observers and Fermi coordinates

The coordinate transformation which maps the Kerr metric written in standard Boyer-Lindquist coordinates to its corresponding form adapted to the natural local coordinates of an observer at rest at a fixed position in the equatorial plane, i.e., Fermi coordinates for the neighborhood of a static observer world line, is derived and discussed in a way which extends to any uniformly circularly orbiting observer there.Comment: 15 page latex iopart class documen

New examples of Calabi-Yau threefolds and genus zero surfaces

We classify the subgroups of the automorphism group of the product of 4 projective lines admitting an invariant anticanonical smooth divisor on which the action is free. As a first application, we describe new examples of Calabi-Yau 3-folds with small Hodge numbers. In particular, the Picard number is 1 and the number of moduli is 5. Furthermore, the fundamental group is non-trivial. We also construct a new family of minimal surfaces of general type with geometric genus zero, K^2=3 and fundamental group of order 16. We show that this family dominates an irreducible component of dimension 4 of the moduli space of the surfaces of general type.Comment: 18 pages; v2: simplified some arguments in the last section, final version to appear on Communications in Contemporary Mathematic

Spinning test particles and clock effect in Schwarzschild spacetime

We study the behaviour of spinning test particles in the Schwarzschild spacetime. Using Mathisson-Papapetrou equations of motion we confine our attention to spatially circular orbits and search for observable effects which could eventually discriminate among the standard supplementary conditions namely the Corinaldesi-Papapetrou, Pirani and Tulczyjew. We find that if the world line chosen for the multipole reduction and whose unit tangent we denote as $U$ is a circular orbit then also the generalized momentum $P$ of the spinning test particle is tangent to a circular orbit even though $P$ and $U$ are not parallel four-vectors. These orbits are shown to exist because the spin induced tidal forces provide the required acceleration no matter what supplementary condition we select. Of course, in the limit of a small spin the particle's orbit is close of being a circular geodesic and the (small) deviation of the angular velocities from the geodesic values can be of an arbitrary sign, corresponding to the possible spin-up and spin-down alignment to the z-axis. When two spinning particles orbit around a gravitating source in opposite directions, they make one loop with respect to a given static observer with different arrival times. This difference is termed clock effect. We find that a nonzero gravitomagnetic clock effect appears for oppositely orbiting both spin-up or spin-down particles even in the Schwarzschild spacetime. This allows us to establish a formal analogy with the case of (spin-less) geodesics on the equatorial plane of the Kerr spacetime. This result can be verified experimentally.Comment: IOP macros, eps figures n. 2, to appear on Classical and Quantum gravity, 200

Energy and angular momentum of general 4-dimensional stationary axi-symmetric spacetime in teleparallel geometry

We derive an exact general axi-symmetric solution of the coupled gravitational and electromagnetic fields in the tetrad theory of gravitation. The solution is characterized by four parameters $M$ (mass), $Q$ (charge), $a$ (rotation) and $L$ (NUT). We then, calculate the total exterior energy using the energy-momentum complex given by M{\o}ller in the framework of Weitzenb$\ddot{o}$ck geometry. We show that the energy contained in a sphere is shared by its interior as well as exterior. We also calculate the components of the spatial momentum to evaluate the angular momentum distribution. We show that the only non-vanishing components of the angular momentum is in the Z direction.Comment: Latex. Will appear in IJMP

Spin precession in the Schwarzschild spacetime: circular orbits

We study the behavior of nonzero rest mass spinning test particles moving along circular orbits in the Schwarzschild spacetime in the case in which the components of the spin tensor are allowed to vary along the orbit, generalizing some previous work.Comment: To appear on Classical and Quantum Gravity, 200

Spinning particles in Schwarzschild-de Sitter space-time

After considering the reference case of the motion of spinning test bodies in the equatorial plane of the Schwarzschild space-time, we generalize the results to the case of the motion of a spinning particle in the equatorial plane of the Schwarzschild-de Sitter space-time. Specifically, we obtain the loci of turning points of the particle in this plane. We show that the cosmological constant affect the particle motion when the particle distance from the black hole is of the order of the inverse square root of the cosmological constant.Comment: 8 pages, 5 eps figures, submitted to Gen.Rel.Gra

Some families of big and stable bundles on K3 surfaces and on their Hilbert schemes of points

Here we investigate meaningful families of vector bundles on a very general polarized K3 surface (X,H) and on the corresponding Hyper--Kähler variety given by the Hilbert scheme of points X[k]:=Hilbk(X), for any integer k⩾2. In particular, we prove results concerning bigness and stability of such bundles. First, we give conditions on integers n such that the twist of the tangent bundle of X by the line bundle nH turns out to be big and stable on X; we then prove a similar result for a natural twist of the tangent bundle of X[k]. Next, by a careful analysis on Segre classes, we prove bigness and stability results for tautological bundles on X[k] arising either from line bundles or from Mukai-Lazarsfeld bundles, as well as from Ulrich bundles on X