4,044 research outputs found
Finally, results from Gravity Probe-B
Nearly fifty years after its inception, the Gravity Probe B satellite mission
delivers the first measurements of how a spinning gyroscope precesses in the
gravitational warping of spacetime.Comment: A Viewpoint article, published in Physics 4, 43 (2011), available at
http://physics.aps.org/articles/v4/43 Submitted to the arXiv by permission of
the American Physical Societ
Strong field effects on binary systems in Einstein-aether theory
"Einstein-aether" theory is a generally covariant theory of gravity
containing a dynamical preferred frame. This article continues an examination
of effects on the motion of binary pulsar systems in this theory, by
incorporating effects due to strong fields in the vicinity of neutron star
pulsars. These effects are included through an effective approach, by treating
the compact bodies as point particles with nonstandard, velocity dependent
interactions parametrized by dimensionless "sensitivities". Effective
post-Newtonian equations of motion for the bodies and the radiation damping
rate are determined. More work is needed to calculate values of the
sensitivities for a given fluid source, so precise constraints on the theory's
coupling constants cannot yet be stated. It is shown, however, that strong
field effects will be negligible given current observational uncertainties if
the dimensionless couplings are less than roughly 0.01 and two conditions that
match the PPN parameters to those of pure general relativity are imposed. In
this case, weak field results suffice and imply one further condition on the
couplings. Thus, there exists a one-parameter family of Einstein-aether
theories with "small-enough" couplings that passes all current observational
tests. No conclusion can yet be reached for large couplings.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure; v2: fixed error in Eqn. (70) and resulting bounds
on c'
Generic features of Einstein-Aether black holes
We reconsider spherically symmetric black hole solutions in Einstein-Aether
theory with the condition that this theory has identical PPN parameters as
those for general relativity, which is the main difference from the previous
research. In contrast with previous study, we allow superluminal propagation of
a spin-0 Aether-gravity wave mode. As a result, we obtain black holes having a
spin-0 "horizon" inside an event horizon. We allow a singularity at a spin-0
"horizon" since it is concealed by the event horizon. If we allow such a
configuration, the kinetic term of the Aether field can be large enough for
black holes to be significantly different from Schwarzschild black holes with
respect to ADM mass, innermost stable circular orbit, Hawking temperature, and
so on. We also discuss whether or not the above features can be seen in more
generic vector-tensor theories.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, basic equations and their analytic arguments are
adde
Constraining f(R) Gravity as a Scalar Tensor Theory
We search for viable f(R) theories of gravity, making use of the equivalence
between such theories and scalar-tensor gravity. We find that models can be
made consistent with solar system constraints either by giving the scalar a
high mass or by exploiting the so-called chameleon effect. However, in both
cases, it appears likely that any late-time cosmic acceleration will be
observationally indistinguishable from acceleration caused by a cosmological
constant. We also explore further observational constraints from, e.g., big
bang nucleosynthesis and inflation.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
Towards the use of the most massive black hole candidates in AGN to test the Kerr paradigm
The super-massive objects in galactic nuclei are thought to be the Kerr black
holes predicted by General Relativity, although a definite proof of their
actual nature is still lacking. The most massive objects in AGN () seem to have a high radiative efficiency () and a
moderate mass accretion rate (). The high
radiative efficiency could suggest they are very rapidly-rotating black holes.
The moderate luminosity could indicate that their accretion disk is
geometrically thin. If so, these objects could be excellent candidates to test
the Kerr black hole hypothesis. An accurate measurement of the radiative
efficiency of an individual AGN may probe the geometry of the space-time around
the black hole candidate with a precision comparable to the one achievable with
future space-based gravitational-wave detectors like LISA. A robust evidence of
the existence of a black hole candidate with and accreting from a
thin disk may be interpreted as an indication of new physics. For the time
being, there are several issues to address before using AGN to test the Kerr
paradigm, but the approach seems to be promising and capable of providing
interesting results before the advent of gravitational wave astronomy.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. v2: some typos correcte
Constraining the evolutionary history of Newton's constant with gravitational wave observations
Space-borne gravitational wave detectors, such as the proposed Laser
Interferometer Space Antenna, are expected to observe black hole coalescences
to high redshift and with large signal-to-noise ratios, rendering their
gravitational waves ideal probes of fundamental physics. The promotion of
Newton's constant to a time-function introduces modifications to the binary's
binding energy and the gravitational wave luminosity, leading to corrections in
the chirping frequency. Such corrections propagate into the response function
and, given a gravitational wave observation, they allow for constraints on the
first time-derivative of Newton's constant at the time of merger. We find that
space-borne detectors could indeed place interesting constraints on this
quantity as a function of sky position and redshift, providing a
{\emph{constraint map}} over the entire range of redshifts where binary black
hole mergers are expected to occur. A LISA observation of an equal-mass
inspiral event with total redshifted mass of 10^5 solar masses for three years
should be able to measure at the time of merger to better than
10^(-11)/yr.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, replaced with version accepted for publication
in Phys. Rev. D
Visualizing classification of natural video sequences using sparse, hierarchical models of cortex.
Recent work on hierarchical models of visual cortex has reported state-of-the-art accuracy on whole-scene labeling using natural still imagery. This raises the question of whether the reported accuracy may be due to the sophisticated, non-biological back-end supervised classifiers typically used (support vector machines) and/or the limited number of images used in these experiments. In particular, is the model classifying features from the object or the background? Previous work (Landecker, Brumby, et al., COSYNE 2010) proposed tracing the spatial support of a classifier’s decision back through a hierarchical cortical model to determine which parts of the image contributed to the classification, compared to the positions of objects in the scene. In this way, we can go beyond standard measures of accuracy to provide tools for visualizing and analyzing high-level object classification. We now describe new work exploring the extension of these ideas to detection of objects in video sequences of natural scenes
Progress in Lunar Laser Ranging Tests of Relativistic Gravity
Analyses of laser ranges to the Moon provide increasingly stringent limits on
any violation of the Equivalence Principle (EP); they also enable several very
accurate tests of relativistic gravity. We report the results of our recent
analysis of Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) data giving an EP test of \Delta
(M_G/M_I)_{EP} =(-1.0 +/- 1.4) x 10^{-13}. This result yields a Strong
Equivalence Principle (SEP) test of \Delta (M_G/M_I)_{SEP} =(-2.0 +/- 2.0) x
10^{-13}. Also, the corresponding SEP violation parameter \eta is (4.4 +/- 4.5)
x 10^{-4}, where \eta=4\beta-\gamma-3 and both \beta and \gamma are
parametrized post-Newtonian (PPN) parameters. Using the recent Cassini result
for the parameter \gamma, PPN parameter \beta is determined to be \beta-1=(1.2
+/- 1.1) x 10^{-4}. The geodetic precession test, expressed as a relative
deviation from general relativity, is K_{gp}=-0.0019 +/- 0.0064. The search for
a time variation in the gravitational constant results in \dot G/G=(4 +/- 9) x
10^{-13} yr^{-1}, consequently there is no evidence for local (~1AU) scale
expansion of the solar system.Comment: 4 pages, revtex4, minor changes made for publicatio
Visser's Massive Gravity Bimetric Theory Revisited
A massive gravity theory was proposed by Visser in the late nineties. This
theory, based on a backgroung metric and on an usual
dynamical metric has the advantage of being free of ghosts
as well as discontinuities present in other massive theories proposed in the
past. In the present investigation, the equations of Visser's theory are
revisited with a particular care on the related conservation laws.\ It will be
shown that a multiplicative factor is missing in the graviton tensor originally
derived by Visser, which has no incidence on the weak field approach but
becomes important in the strong field regime when, for instance, cosmological
applications are considered. In this case, contrary to some previous claims
found in the literature, we conclude that a non-static background metric is
required in order to obtain a solution able to mimic the CDM
cosmology.Comment: 10 pages - Accepted for publication in Physical Review
- …