Superradiant scattering of dispersive fields

Motivated by analogue models of classical and quantum field theory in curved spacetimes and their recent experimental realizations, we consider wave scattering processes of dispersive fields exhibiting two extra degrees of freedom. In particular, we investigate how standard superradiant scattering processes are affected by subluminal or superluminal modifications of the dispersion relation. We analyze simple 1-dimensional toy-models based on fourth-order corrections to the standard second order wave equation and show that low-frequency waves impinging on generic scattering potentials can be amplified during the process. In specific cases, by assuming a simple step potential, we determine quantitatively the deviations in the amplification spectrum that arise due to dispersion, and demonstrate that the amplification can be further enhanced due to the presence of extra degrees of freedom. We also consider dispersive scattering processes in which the medium where the scattering takes place is moving with respect to the observer and show that superradiance can also be manifest in such situations.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures; published in CQ

Follow-up signals from superradiant instabilities of black hole merger remnants

Superradiant instabilities can trigger the formation of bosonic clouds around rotating black holes. If the bosonic field growth is sufficiently fast, these clouds could form shortly after a binary black hole merger. Such clouds are continuous sources of gravitational waves whose detection (or lack thereof) can probe the existence of ultralight bosons (such as axion-like particles) and their properties. Motivated by the binary black hole mergers seen by Advanced LIGO so far, we investigate in detail the parameter space that can be probed with continuous gravitational wave signals from ultralight scalar field clouds around black hole merger remnants with particular focus on future ground-based detectors (A+, Voyager and Cosmic Explorer). We also study the impact that the confusion noise from a putative stochastic gravitational-wave background from unresolved sources would have on such searches and we estimate, under different astrophysical priors, the number of binary black-hole merger events that could lead to an observable post-merger signal. Under our most optimistic assumptions, Cosmic Explorer could detect dozens of post-merger signals.Comment: v1:10 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables; v2: matches published versio

Analogue model for anti-de Sitter as a description of point sources in fluids

We introduce an analogue model for a nonglobally hyperbolic spacetime in terms of a two-dimensional fluid. This is done by considering the propagation of sound waves in a radial flow with constant velocity. We show that the equation of motion satisfied by sound waves is the wave equation on $AdS_2\times S^1$. Since this spacetime is not globally hyperbolic, the dynamics of the Klein-Gordon field is not well defined until boundary conditions at the spatial boundary of $AdS_2$ are prescribed. On the analogue model end, those extra boundary conditions provide an effective description of the point source at $r=0$. For waves with circular symmetry, we relate the different physical evolutions to the phase difference between ingoing and outgoing scattered waves. We also show that the fluid configuration can be stable or unstable depending on the chosen boundary condition.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. To appear in Phys Rev

Black hole binaries: ergoregions, photon surfaces, wave scattering, and quasinormal modes

Closed photon orbits around isolated black holes are related to important aspects of black hole physics, such as strong lensing, absorption cross section of null particles and the way that black holes relax through quasinormal ringing. When two black holes are present -- such as during the inspiral and merger events of interest for gravitational-wave detectors -- the concept of closed photon orbits still exists, but its properties are basically unknown. With these applications in mind, we study here the closed photon orbits of two different static black hole binaries. The first one is the Majumdar-Papapetrou geometry describing two extremal, charged black holes in equilibrium, while the second one is the double sink solution of fluid dynamics, which describes (in a curved-spacetime language) two "dumb" holes. For the latter solution, we also characterize its dynamical response to external perturbations, and study how it relates to the photon orbits. In addition, we compute the ergoregion of such spacetime and show that it does not coincide with the event horizon.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures. v3: minor edits, to appear in Physical Review