7 research outputs found
Cosmic Black-Hole Hair Growth and Quasar OJ287
An old result ({\tt astro-ph/9905303}) by Jacobson implies that a black hole
with Schwarzschild radius acquires scalar hair, ,
when the (canonically normalized) scalar field in question is slowly
time-dependent far from the black hole, with
time-independent. Such a time dependence could arise in
scalar-tensor theories either from cosmological evolution, or due to the slow
motion of the black hole within an asymptotic spatial gradient in the scalar
field. Most remarkably, the amount of scalar hair so induced is independent of
the strength with which the scalar couples to matter. We argue that Jacobson's
Miracle Hair-Growth Formula implies, in particular, that an
orbiting pair of black holes can radiate {\em dipole} radiation, provided only
that the two black holes have different masses. Quasar OJ 287, situated at
redshift , has been argued to be a double black-hole binary
system of this type, whose orbital decay recently has been indirectly measured
and found to agree with the predictions of General Relativity to within 6%. We
argue that the absence of observable scalar dipole radiation in this system
yields the remarkable bound on the
instantaneous time derivative at this redshift (as opposed to constraining an
average field difference, , over cosmological times), provided
only that the scalar is light enough to be radiated --- i.e. m \lsim 10^{-23}
eV --- independent of how the scalar couples to matter. This can also be
interpreted as constraining (in a more model-dependent way) the binary's motion
relative to any spatial variation of the scalar field within its immediate
vicinity within its host galaxy.Comment: 20 page
Semi-Analytic Stellar Structure in Scalar-Tensor Gravity
Precision tests of gravity can be used to constrain the properties of
hypothetical very light scalar fields, but these tests depend crucially on how
macroscopic astrophysical objects couple to the new scalar field. We develop
quasi-analytic methods for solving the equations of stellar structure using
scalar-tensor gravity, with the goal of seeing how stellar properties depend on
assumptions made about the scalar coupling at a microscopic level. We
illustrate these methods by applying them to Brans-Dicke scalars, and their
generalization in which the scalar-matter coupling is a weak function of the
scalar field. The four observable parameters that characterize the fields
external to a spherically symmetric star (the stellar radius, R, mass, M,
scalar `charge', Q, and the scalar's asymptotic value, phi_infty) are subject
to two relations because of the matching to the interior solution, generalizing
the usual mass-radius, M(R), relation of General Relativity. We identify how
these relations depend on the microscopic scalar couplings, agreeing with
earlier workers when comparisons are possible. Explicit analytical solutions
are obtained for the instructive toy model of constant-density stars, whose
properties we compare to more realistic equations of state for neutron star
models.Comment: 39 pages, 9 figure