Spherical non-linear absorption of cosmological scalar fields onto a black hole

In this paper we track the non-linear spherical evolution of a massless scalar field onto a Schwarzschild black hole space-time as a first approximation to the accretion of cosmologically motivated classical scalar fields. We perform an analysis related to wave packets described by wave number and width. We study various values of the wave number k, and found that for k = 0 and width packets bigger than the Schwarzschild radius, the absorption is not total. In the cases we studied for k > 0, the black hole absorbs the total amount of energy density of the scalar field moving toward the horizon. Our results indicate that assuming spherical symmetry, in the non-linear regime, there are cases for which scalar fields are allowed to survive outside black holes and may eventually have life-times consistent with cosmological time scales.Comment: 7 revtex pages, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Occurrence of Mixed Phase in Bi0.5Sr0.5Mn0.9Cr0.1O3 bulk sample: Electron Paramagnetic Resonance and Magnetization Studies

We study the effects of 10% Cr substitution in Mn sites of Bi0.5Sr0.5MnO3 on the antiferromagnetic (AFM) (TN ~ 110 K) transition using structural, magnetic and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) techniques. Field cooled (FC) and zero field cooled (ZFC) magnetization measurements done from 400 K down to 4 K show that the compound is in the paramagnetic (PM) phase till 50 K where it undergoes a transition to a short range ferromagnetic phase (FM). Electron paramagnetic resonance measurements performed in the temperature range 300 K till 80 K conform with the magnetization measurements as symmetric signals are observed owing to the paramagnetic phase. Below 80 K, signals become asymmetric. Electron paramagnetic resonance intensity peaks at ~ 110 K, the decreasing intensity below this temperature confirming the presence of antiferromagnetism. We conclude that below 50 K the magnetization and EPR results are consistent with a cluster glass phase of BSMCO, where ferromagnetic clusters coexist with an antiferromagnetic background

Rotation curves of ultralight BEC dark matter halos with rotation

We study the rotation curves of ultralight BEC dark matter halos. These halos are long lived solutions of initially rotating BEC fluctuations. In order to study the implications of the rotation characterizing these long-lived configurations we consider the particular case of a boson mass $m=10^{-23}\mathrm{eV/c}^2$ and no self-interaction. We find that these halos successfully fit samples of rotation curves (RCs) of LSB galaxies.Comment: 7 pages, 10 eps figures, 1 tables. Accepted for publication in General Relativity and Gravitatio

Cold, old and metal-poor: New stellar substructures in the Milky Way's dwarf spheroidals

Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) orbiting the Milky Way are complex objects often with complicated star formation histories and internal dynamics. In this work, we search for stellar substructures in four of the classical dSph satellites of the Milky Way: Sextans, Carina, Leo I, and Leo II. We apply two methods to search for stellar substructure: the minimum spanning tree method, which helps us to find and quantify spatially connected structures, and the "brute-force" method, which is able to find elongated stellar substructures. We detected the previously known substructure in Sextans, and also found a new stellar substructure within Sextans. Furthermore, we identified a new stellar substructure close to the core radius of the Carina dwarf galaxy. We report a detection of one substructure in Leo I and two in Leo II, but we note that we are dealing with a low number of stars in the samples used. Such old stellar substructures in dSph galaxies could help us to shed light on the nature of the dark matter halos, within which such structures form, evolve, and survive.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 13 pages, 6 figure

Is the flip-flop behaviour of accretion shock cones on to black holes an effect of coordinates?

We study numerically the relativistic Bondi-Hoyle accretion of an ideal gas onto a Kerr fixed background space-time on the equatorial plane with s-lab symmetry. We use both Kerr-Schild (KS) and Boyer-Lindquist (BL) coordinates. We particularly focus on the study of the flip-flop motion of the shock cone formed when the gas is injected at supersonic speed. The development of the flip-flop instability of the shock cone in the relativistic regime was reported recently for the first time. We reproduce the flip-flop behaviour found in the past when BL coordinates are used, and perform similar numerical experiments using horizon penetrating KS coordinates. We find that when using KS coordinates the shock cone oscillates, however such oscillations are not of the flip-flop type and their amplitude decrease with resolution.Comment: 8 pages, 9 eps figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Horizon growth of supermassive black hole seeds fed with collisional dark matter

We present the accretion of collisional dark matter on a supermassive black hole seed. The analysis is based on the numerical solution of the fully coupled system of Einstein-Euler equations for spherically symmetric flow, where the dark matter is modeled as a perfect fluid that obeys an ideal gas equation of state. As the black hole actually grows, the accretion rate of dark matter corresponds to the black hole apparent horizon growth rate. We analyse cases with infall velocity as high as $0.5c$ and an environment density of $100M_{\odot}/\mathrm{pc}^3$, which are rather extreme conditions. Being the radial flux the maximum accretion case, our results show that the accretion of an ideal gas, eventually collisional dark matter, does not contribute significantly to SMBH masses. This result favors models predicting SMBHs were formed already with supermasses. We show that despite the fact that we are solving the full general relativistic system, for the parameter space studied our results are surprisingly similar to those obtained using the Bondi formula, which somehow certifies its use as a good approximation of a fully evolving space-time with spherical symmetry at short scales at least for dark matter densities. Additionally, we study the density profile of the gas and find that the presence of SMBHs redistributes the gas near the event horizon with a cuspy profile, whereas beyond a small fraction of a parsec it is not-cuspy anymore.Comment: 11 pages, 6 eps figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Evolution of a mass-less test scalar field on Boson Stars space-times

We numerically solve the mass-less test scalar field equation on the space-time background of boson stars and black holes. In order to do so, we use a numerical domain that contains future null infinity. We achieve this construction using a scri-fixing conformal compactification technique based on hyperboloidal constant mean curvature foliations of the space-time and solve the conformally invariant wave equation. We present two results: the scalar field shows oscillations of the quasi- normal-mode type found for black holes only for boson star configurations that are compact, and no signs of tail decay is found in the parameter space we explored. Even though our results do not correspond to the master equation of perturbations of boson star solutions, they indicate that the parameter space of boson stars as black hole mimickers is restricted to compact configurations.Comment: 9 pages, 15 eps figures, revtex

CAFE: A New Relativistic MHD Code

We introduce CAFE, a new independent code designed to solve the equations of Relativistic ideal Magnetohydrodynamics (RMHD) in 3D. We present the standard tests for a RMHD code and for the Relativistic Hydrodynamics (RHD) regime since we have not reported them before. The tests include the 1D Riemann problems related to blast waves, head-on collision of streams and states with transverse velocities, with and without magnetic field, which is aligned or transverse, constant or discontinuous across the initial discontinuity. Among the 2D and 3D tests, without magnetic field we include the 2D Riemann problem, a one dimensional shock tube along a diagonal, the high speed Emery wind tunnel, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, a set of jets and a 3D spherical blast wave, whereas in the presence of a magnetic field we show the magnetic rotor, the cylindrical explosion, a case of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability and a 3D magnetic field advection loop. The code uses High Resolution Shock Capturing methods and we present the error analysis for a combination that uses the HLLE flux formula combined with linear, PPM and fifth order WENO reconstructors. We use the flux-CT and the divergence cleaning methods to control the divergence free magnetic field constraint.Comment: 30 pages, 110 png figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement. More numerical details, tests and additional reference

Revisiting spherically symmetric relativistic hydrodynamics

In this paper we revise two classical examples of Relativistic Hydrodynamics in order to illustrate in detail the numerical methods commonly used in fluid dynamics, specifically those designed to deal with shocks, which are based on a finite volume approximation. The two cases we consider are the relativistic blast wave problem and the evolution of a Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff star model, in spherical symmetry. In the first case we illustrate the implementation of relativistic Euler's equations on a fixed background space-time, whereas in the second case we also show how to couple the evolution of the fluid to the evolution of the space-time.Comment: Prepared with educative purposes, 15 pages, 34 eps figure

PBH mass growth through radial accretion during the radiation dominated era

We model the radial accretion of radiation on Primordial Black Holes (PBH) by numerically solving Einstein's equations coupled to an ultrarelativistic ideal gas with equation of state $p=\rho/3$. We calculate the final mass of a black hole by the integration of the accreted radiation energy density during the leptonic era between $t\sim10^{-4}s$ to $t\sim 10^2s$ after the Big Bang. Our results indicate that small PBHs with initial masses between $10^{-4}$ to $1M_{\odot}$ may grow up to hundreds of solar masses, and thus can be SMBH seeds. On the other hand, PBHs formed at $t\sim 1s$ with initial mass between 900 and $\sim 980M_{\odot}$, by the time $t\sim 100s$ show masses of $10^4$ to $10^6M_{\odot}$ which are masses of seeds or already formed SMBHs. The fact that we consider only radial flow implies that our results work well as limiting cases, and it is expected that under more general scenarios the accretion rates may change significantly. Nevertheless we show that it is possible that SMBHs can be PBHs that grew due to the accretion of radiation.Comment: 15 pages, 6 eps figures. Accepted for publication in JCA