24 research outputs found
Radiation from a D-dimensional collision of shock waves: first order perturbation theory
We study the spacetime obtained by superimposing two equal Aichelburg-Sexl
shock waves in D dimensions traveling, head-on, in opposite directions.
Considering the collision in a boosted frame, one shock becomes stronger than
the other, and a perturbative framework to compute the metric in the future of
the collision is setup. The geometry is given, in first order perturbation
theory, as an integral solution, in terms of initial data on the null surface
where the strong shock has support. We then extract the radiation emitted in
the collision by using a D-dimensional generalisation of the Landau-Lifschitz
pseudo-tensor and compute the percentage of the initial centre of mass energy
epsilon emitted as gravitational waves. In D=4 we find epsilon=25.0%, in
agreement with the result of D'Eath and Payne. As D increases, this percentage
increases monotonically, reaching 40.0% in D=10. Our result is always within
the bound obtained from apparent horizons by Penrose, in D=4, yielding 29.3%,
and Eardley and Giddings, in D> 4, which also increases monotonically with
dimension, reaching 41.2% in D=10. We also present the wave forms and provide a
physical interpretation for the observed peaks, in terms of the null generators
of the shocks.Comment: 27 pages, 11 figures; v2 some corrections, including D dependent
factor in epsilon; matches version accepted in JHE
Colliding AdS gravitational shock waves in various dimensions and holography
The formation of marginally trapped surfaces in the off-center collision of
two shock waves on AdS_D (with D=4,5,6,7 and 8) is studied numerically. We
focus on the case when the two waves collide with nonvanishing impact parameter
while the sources are located at the same value of the holographic coordinate.
In all cases a critical value of the impact parameter is found above which no
trapped surface is formed. The numerical results show the existence of a simple
scaling relation between the critical impact parameter and the energy of the
colliding waves. Using the isometries of AdS_D we relate the solutions obtained
to the ones describing the collision of two waves with a purely holographic
impact parameter. This provides a gravitational dual for the head-on collision
of two lumps of energy of unequal size.Comment: 25 pages, 11 figures. v2: minor changes, typos corrected. To appear
in JHE
Radiation from a D-dimensional collision of shock waves: proof of first order formula and angular factorisation at all orders
Critical Trapped Surfaces Formation in the Collision of Ultrarelativistic Charges in (A)dS
We study the formation of marginally trapped surfaces in the head-on
collision of two ultrarelativistic charges in space-time. The metric of
ultrarelativistic charged particles in is obtained by boosting
Reissner-Nordstr\"om space-time to the speed of light. We show that
formation of trapped surfaces on the past light cone is only possible when
charge is below certain critical - situation similar to the collision of two
ultrarelativistic charges in Minkowski space-time. This critical value depends
on the energy of colliding particles and the value of a cosmological constant.
There is richer structure of critical domains in case. In this case
already for chargeless particles there is a critical value of the cosmological
constant only below which trapped surfaces formation is possible. Appearance of
arbitrary small nonzero charge significantly changes the physical picture.
Critical effect which has been observed in the neutral case does not take place
more. If the value of the charge is not very large solution to the equation on
trapped surface exists for any values of cosmological radius and energy density
of shock waves. Increasing of the charge leads to decrease of the trapped
surface area, and at some critical point the formation of trapped surfaces of
the type mentioned above becomes impossible.Comment: 30 pages, Latex, 7 figures, Refs. added and typos correcte
Causality violation, gravitational shockwaves and UV completion
The effective actions describing the low-energy dynamics of QFTs involving
gravity generically exhibit causality violations. These may take the form of
superluminal propagation or Shapiro time advances and allow the construction of
"time machines", i.e. spacetimes admitting closed non-spacelike curves. Here,
we discuss critically whether such causality violations may be used as a
criterion to identify unphysical effective actions or whether, and how,
causality problems may be resolved by embedding the action in a fundamental, UV
complete QFT. We study in detail the case of photon scattering in an
Aichelburg-Sexl gravitational shockwave background and calculate the phase
shifts in QED for all energies, demonstrating their smooth interpolation from
the causality-violating effective action values at low-energy to their
manifestly causal high-energy limits. At low energies, these phase shifts may
be interpreted as backwards-in-time coordinate jumps as the photon encounters
the shock wavefront, and we illustrate how the resulting causality problems
emerge and are resolved in a two-shockwave time machine scenario. The
implications of our results for ultra-high (Planck) energy scattering, in which
graviton exchange is modelled by the shockwave background, are highlighted.Comment: 42 pages, 15 figures, updated reference
The motion of point particles in curved spacetime
This review is concerned with the motion of a point scalar charge, a point
electric charge, and a point mass in a specified background spacetime. In each
of the three cases the particle produces a field that behaves as outgoing
radiation in the wave zone, and therefore removes energy from the particle. In
the near zone the field acts on the particle and gives rise to a self-force
that prevents the particle from moving on a geodesic of the background
spacetime. The field's action on the particle is difficult to calculate because
of its singular nature: the field diverges at the position of the particle. But
it is possible to isolate the field's singular part and show that it exerts no
force on the particle -- its only effect is to contribute to the particle's
inertia. What remains after subtraction is a smooth field that is fully
responsible for the self-force. Because this field satisfies a homogeneous wave
equation, it can be thought of as a free (radiative) field that interacts with
the particle; it is this interaction that gives rise to the self-force. The
mathematical tools required to derive the equations of motion of a point scalar
charge, a point electric charge, and a point mass in a specified background
spacetime are developed here from scratch. The review begins with a discussion
of the basic theory of bitensors (part I). It then applies the theory to the
construction of convenient coordinate systems to chart a neighbourhood of the
particle's word line (part II). It continues with a thorough discussion of
Green's functions in curved spacetime (part III). The review concludes with a
detailed derivation of each of the three equations of motion (part IV).Comment: LaTeX2e, 116 pages, 10 figures. This is the final version, as it will
appear in Living Reviews in Relativit
Exploring new physics frontiers through numerical relativity
The demand to obtain answers to highly complex problems within strong-field gravity has been met with significant progress in the numerical solution of Einstein's equations - along with some spectacular results - in various setups. We review techniques for solving Einstein's equations in generic spacetimes, focusing on fully nonlinear evolutions but also on how to benchmark those results with perturbative approaches. The results address problems in high-energy physics, holography, mathematical physics, fundamental physics, astrophysics and cosmology
Quantum black holes and their lepton signatures at the LHC with CalCHEP
We discuss a field theoretical framework to describe the interactions of non-thermal quantum black holes (QBHs) with particles of the Standard Model. We propose a non-local Lagrangian to describe the production of these QBHs which is designed to reproduce the geometrical cross section πrs2 for black hole production where rs is the Schwarzschild radius. This model is implemented into CalcHEP package and is publicly available at the High Energy Model Database (HEPMDB) for simulation of QBH events at the LHC and future colliders. We present the first phenomenological application of the QBH@HEPMDB model with spin-0 neutral QBH giving rise the e+e− and eμ signatures at the LHC@8TeV and LHC@13TeV and produce the respective projections for the LHC in terms of limits on the reduced Planck mass, M¯PL and the number of the extra-dimensions n