2,347 research outputs found
Collapsing and static thin massive charged dust shells in a Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole background in higher dimensions
The problem of a spherically symmetric charged thin shell of dust collapsing
gravitationally into a charged Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole in spacetime
dimensions is studied within the theory of general relativity. Static charged
shells in such a background are also analyzed. First a derivation of the
equation of motion of such a shell in a -dimensional spacetime is given.
Then a proof of the cosmic censorship conjecture in a charged collapsing
framework is presented, and a useful constraint which leads to an upper bound
for the rest mass of a charged shell with an empty interior is derived. It is
also proved that a shell with total mass equal to charge, i.e., an extremal
shell, in an empty interior, can only stay in neutral equilibrium outside its
gravitational radius. This implies that it is not possible to generate a
regular extremal black hole by placing an extremal dust thin shell within its
own gravitational radius. Moreover, it is shown, for an empty interior, that
the rest mass of the shell is limited from above. Then several types of
behavior of oscillatory charged shells are studied. In the presence of a
horizon, it is shown that an oscillatory shell always enters the horizon and
reemerges in a new asymptotically flat region of the extended
Reissner-Nordstr\"om spacetime. On the other hand, for an overcharged interior,
i.e., a shell with no horizons, an example showing that the shell can achieve a
stable equilibrium position is presented. The results presented have
applications in brane scenarios with extra large dimensions, where the creation
of tiny higher dimensional charged black holes in current particle accelerators
might be a real possibility, and generalize to higher dimensions previous
calculations on the dynamics of charged shells in four dimensions.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figure
The Long-Term Future of Space Travel
The fact that we apparently live in an accelerating universe places
limitations on where humans might visit. If the current energy density of the
universe is dominated by a cosmological constant, a rocket could reach a galaxy
observed today at a redshift of 1.7 on a one-way journey or merely 0.65 on a
round trip. Unfortunately these maximal trips are impractical as they require
an infinite proper time to traverse. However, calculating the rocket trajectory
in detail shows that a rocketeer could nearly reach such galaxies within a
lifetime (a long lifetime admittedly -- about 100 years). For less negative
values of the maximal redshift increases becoming infinite for .Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, minor changes to reflect version accepted to PR
The geometry of a naked singularity created by standing waves near a Schwarzschild horizon, and its application to the binary black hole problem
The most promising way to compute the gravitational waves emitted by binary
black holes (BBHs) in their last dozen orbits, where post-Newtonian techniques
fail, is a quasistationary approximation introduced by Detweiler and being
pursued by Price and others. In this approximation the outgoing gravitational
waves at infinity and downgoing gravitational waves at the holes' horizons are
replaced by standing waves so as to guarantee that the spacetime has a helical
Killing vector field. Because the horizon generators will not, in general, be
tidally locked to the holes' orbital motion, the standing waves will destroy
the horizons, converting the black holes into naked singularities that resemble
black holes down to near the horizon radius. This paper uses a spherically
symmetric, scalar-field model problem to explore in detail the following BBH
issues: (i) The destruction of a horizon by the standing waves. (ii) The
accuracy with which the resulting naked singularity resembles a black hole.
(iii) The conversion of the standing-wave spacetime (with a destroyed horizon)
into a spacetime with downgoing waves by the addition of a ``radiation-reaction
field''. (iv) The accuracy with which the resulting downgoing waves agree with
the downgoing waves of a true black-hole spacetime (with horizon). The model
problem used to study these issues consists of a Schwarzschild black hole
endowed with spherical standing waves of a scalar field. It is found that the
spacetime metric of the singular, standing-wave spacetime, and its
radiation-reaction-field-constructed downgoing waves are quite close to those
for a Schwarzschild black hole with downgoing waves -- sufficiently close to
make the BBH quasistationary approximation look promising for
non-tidally-locked black holes.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure
Regularization of the second-order gravitational perturbations produced by a compact object
The equations for the second-order gravitational perturbations produced by a
compact-object have highly singular source terms at the point particle limit.
At this limit the standard retarded solutions to these equations are
ill-defined. Here we construct well-defined and physically meaningful solutions
to these equations. These solutions are important for practical calculations:
the planned gravitational-wave detector LISA requires preparation of waveform
templates for the potential gravitational-waves. Construction of templates with
desired accuracy for extreme mass ratio binaries, in which a compact-object
inspirals towards a supermassive black-hole, requires calculation of the
second-order gravitational perturbations produced by the compact-object.Comment: 12 pages, discussion expanded, to be published in Phys. Rev. D Rapid
Communicatio
Optical position meters analyzed in the non-inertial reference frames
In the framework of General Relativity we develop a method for analysis of
the operation of the optical position meters in their photodetectors proper
reference frames. These frames are non-inertial in general due to the action of
external fluctuative forces on meters test masses, including detectors. For
comparison we also perform the calculations in the laboratory (globally
inertial) reference frame and demonstrate that for certain optical schemes
laboratory-based analysis results in unmeasurable quantities, in contrast to
the detector-based analysis. We also calculate the response of the simplest
optical meters to weak plane gravitational waves and fluctuative motions of
their test masses. It is demonstrated that for the round-trip meter analysis in
both the transverse-traceless (TT) and local Lorentz (LL) gauges produces equal
results, while for the forward-trip meter corresponding results differ in
accordance with different physical assumptions (e.g. procedure of clocks
synchronization) implicitly underlying the construction of the TT and LL
gauges.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures; co-author added, added section VC with
discussion of procedures of clocks synchronization, corrected sign in old
Eq.17 (currently it is Eq.18
The Tolman-Bondi--Vaidya Spacetime: matching timelike dust to null dust
The Tolman-Bondi and Vaidya solutions are two solutions to Einstein equations
which describe dust particles and null fluid, respectively. We show that it is
possible to match the two solutions in one single spacetime, the
Tolman-Bondi--Vaidya spacetime. The new spacetime is divided by a null surface
with Tolman-Bondi dust on one side and Vaidya fluid on the other side. The
differentiability of the spacetime is discussed. By constructing a specific
solution, we show that the metric across the null surface can be at least
and the stress-energy tensor is continuous.Comment: 5 pages, no figur
Recent Results Regarding Affine Quantum Gravity
Recent progress in the quantization of nonrenormalizable scalar fields has
found that a suitable non-classical modification of the ground state wave
function leads to a result that eliminates term-by-term divergences that arise
in a conventional perturbation analysis. After a brief review of both the
scalar field story and the affine quantum gravity program, examination of the
procedures used in the latter surprisingly shows an analogous formulation which
already implies that affine quantum gravity is not plagued by divergences that
arise in a standard perturbation study. Additionally, guided by the projection
operator method to deal with quantum constraints, trial reproducing kernels are
introduced that satisfy the diffeomorphism constraints. Furthermore, it is
argued that the trial reproducing kernels for the diffeomorphism constraints
may also satisfy the Hamiltonian constraint as well.Comment: 32 pages, new features in this alternative approach to quantize
gravity, minor typos plus an improved argument in Sec. 9 suggested by Karel
Kucha
Construction of the second-order gravitational perturbations produced by a compact object
Accurate calculation of the gradual inspiral motion in an extreme mass-ratio
binary system, in which a compact-object inspirals towards a supermassive
black-hole requires calculation of the interaction between the compact-object
and the gravitational perturbations that it induces. These metric perturbations
satisfy linear partial differential equations on a curved background spacetime
induced by the supermassive black-hole. At the point particle limit the
second-order perturbations equations have source terms that diverge as
, where is the distance from the particle. This singular behavior
renders the standard retarded solutions of these equations ill-defined. Here we
resolve this problem and construct well-defined and physically meaningful
solutions to these equations. We recently presented an outline of this
resolution [E. Rosenthal, Phys. Rev. D 72, 121503 (2005)]. Here we provide the
full details of this analysis. These second-order solutions are important for
practical calculations: the planned gravitational-wave detector LISA requires
preparation of waveform templates for the expected gravitational-waves.
Construction of templates with desired accuracy for extreme mass-ratio binaries
requires accurate calculation of the inspiral motion including the interaction
with the second-order gravitational perturbations.Comment: 30 page
Supersymmetric quantum cosmological billiards
D=11 Supergravity near a space-like singularity admits a cosmological
billiard description based on the hyperbolic Kac-Moody group E10. The
quantization of this system via the supersymmetry constraint is shown to lead
to wavefunctions involving automorphic (Maass wave) forms under the modular
group W^+(E10)=PSL(2,O) with Dirichlet boundary conditions on the billiard
domain. A general inequality for the Laplace eigenvalues of these automorphic
forms implies that the wave function of the universe is generically complex and
always tends to zero when approaching the initial singularity. We discuss
possible implications of this result for the question of singularity resolution
in quantum cosmology and comment on the differences with other approaches.Comment: 4 pages. v2: Added ref. Version to be published in PR
The strong coupling effect and auxiliary fields in the DGP-model
The DGP-model with additional terms in the action is considered. These terms
have a special form and include auxiliary scalar fields without kinetic terms,
which are non-minimally coupled to gravity. The use of these fields allows one
to exclude the mode, which corresponds to the strong coupling effect, from the
theory. Effective four-dimensional theory on the brane appears to be the same,
as in the original DGP-model.Comment: 9 pages, LaTe
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