10,174 research outputs found
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
Light rings as observational evidence for event horizons: long-lived modes, ergoregions and nonlinear instabilities of ultracompact objects
Ultracompact objects are self-gravitating systems with a light ring. It was
recently suggested that fluctuations in the background of these objects are
extremely long-lived and might turn unstable at the nonlinear level, if the
object is not endowed with a horizon. If correct, this result has important
consequences: objects with a light ring are black holes. In other words, the
nonlinear instability of ultracompact stars would provide a strong argument in
favor of the "black hole hypothesis," once electromagnetic or
gravitational-wave observations confirm the existence of light rings. Here we
explore in some depth the mode structure of ultracompact stars, in particular
constant-density stars and gravastars. We show that the existence of very
long-lived modes -- localized near a second, stable null geodesic -- is a
generic feature of gravitational perturbations of such configurations. Already
at the linear level, such modes become unstable if the object rotates
sufficiently fast to develop an ergoregion. Finally, we conjecture that the
long-lived modes become unstable under fragmentation via a
Dyson-Chandrasekhar-Fermi mechanism at the nonlinear level. Depending on the
structure of the star, it is also possible that nonlinearities lead to the
formation of small black holes close to the stable light ring. Our results
suggest that the mere observation of a light ring is a strong evidence for the
existence of black holes.Comment: 10 pages, RevTeX
Echoes of ECOs: gravitational-wave signatures of exotic compact objects and of quantum corrections at the horizon scale
Gravitational waves from binary coalescences provide one of the cleanest
signatures of the nature of compact objects. It has been recently argued that
the post-merger ringdown waveform of exotic ultracompact objects is initially
identical to that of a black-hole, and that putative corrections at the horizon
scale will appear as secondary pulses after the main burst of radiation. Here
we extend this analysis in three important directions: (i) we show that this
result applies to a large class of exotic compact objects with a photon sphere
for generic orbits in the test-particle limit; (ii) we investigate the
late-time ringdown in more detail, showing that it is universally characterized
by a modulated and distorted train of "echoes" of the modes of vibration
associated with the photon sphere; (iii) we study for the first time
equal-mass, head-on collisions of two ultracompact boson stars and compare
their gravitational-wave signal to that produced by a pair of black-holes. If
the initial objects are compact enough as to mimic a binary black-hole
collision up to the merger, the final object exceeds the maximum mass for boson
stars and collapses to a black-hole. This suggests that - in some
configurations - the coalescence of compact boson stars might be almost
indistinguishable from that of black-holes. On the other hand, generic
configurations display peculiar signatures that can be searched for in
gravitational-wave data as smoking guns of exotic compact objects.Comment: 13 pages, RevTex4. v2: typo in equation 7 corrected, references
added, to appear in PR
Processo de lavagem aumenta a incidência da podridão-mole em raízes de cenoura.
bitstream/CNPH-2009/33413/1/bpd_32.pd
The mixed black hole partition function for the STU model
We evaluate the mixed partition function for dyonic BPS black holes using the
recently proposed degeneracy formula for the STU model. The result factorizes
into the OSV mixed partition function times a proportionality factor. The
latter is in agreement with the measure factor that was recently conjectured
for a class of N=2 black holes that contains the STU model.Comment: 14 page
Gravitational instabilities of superspinars
Superspinars are ultracompact objects whose mass M and angular momentum J
violate the Kerr bound (cJ/GM^2>1). Recent studies analyzed the observable
consequences of gravitational lensing and accretion around superspinars in
astrophysical scenarios. In this paper we investigate the dynamical stability
of superspinars to gravitational perturbations, considering either purely
reflecting or perfectly absorbing boundary conditions at the "surface" of the
superspinar. We find that these objects are unstable independently of the
boundary conditions, and that the instability is strongest for relatively small
values of the spin. Also, we give a physical interpretation of the various
instabilities that we find. Our results (together with the well-known fact that
accretion tends to spin superspinars down) imply that superspinars are very
unlikely astrophysical alternatives to black holes.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. v2: Fig. 8 and Section I improved. v3:
minor changes to match the published versio
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