Related papers: OJ 287: New Testing Ground for General Relativity …
Binary pulsars are ideal to test the foundations of General Relativity, such as Lorentz symmetry, which requires that experiments produce the same results in all free-falling (i.e.inertial) frames. We here break this symmetry in the…
This talk is based on my work in collaboration with Thibault Damour since 1991. Unified theories, like superstrings, predict the existence of scalar partners to the graviton. Such theories of gravity can be very close to general relativity…
The central engine of blazar OJ~287 is arguably the most notable supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary candidate that emits nano-Hertz (nHz) gravitational waves. This inference is mainly due to our ability to predict and successfully…
The discovery of a pulsar (PSR) in orbit around a black hole (BH) is expected to provide a superb new probe of relativistic gravity and BH properties. Apart from a precise mass measurement for the BH, one could expect a clean verification…
Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity is a theoretically well-motivated alternative theory of gravity emerging as a low-energy 4-dimensional model from heterotic string theory. Its rotating black hole solutions are known numerically and can…
The bright blazar OJ 287 is the best-known candidate for hosting a supermassive black hole binary system. It inspirals due to the emission of nanohertz gravitational waves (GWs). Observations of historical and predicted quasi-periodic…
Recent implications of results from quantum information theory applied to black holes has led to the confusing conclusions that requires either abandoning the equivalence principle (e.g. the firewall picture), or the no-hair theorem (e.g.…
Gravitational wave detectors are formidable tools to explore strong-field gravity, especially black holes and neutron stars. These compact objects are extraordinarily efficient at producing electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. As…
The values of the bending delays in the signal of a radio pulsar in a binary with a stellar mass black hole as a companion have been calculated accurately within a full general relativistic framework considering the Schwarzchid spacetime…
Binary systems containing at least one radiopulsar are excellent laboratories to test several aspects of fundamental physics like matter properties in conditions of extreme density and theories of gravitation like the Einstein's General…
Neutron stars and black holes are the astrophysical systems with the strongest gravitational fields in the universe. In this article, I review the prospect of probing with observations of such compact objects some of the most intriguing…
In Einstein's general relativity (GR), gravity is described by a massless spin-2 metric field, and the extension of GR to include a mass term for the graviton has profound implication for gravitation and cosmology. Besides the gravity…
Recently, strong evidence was found for the presence of higher-order modes in the gravitational wave signals GW190412 and GW190814, which originated from compact binary coalescences with significantly asymmetric component masses. This has…
We model the binary black hole system OJ287 as a spinning primary and a non-spinning secondary. It is assumed that the primary has an accretion disk which is impacted by the secondary at specific times. These times are identified as major…
The classical Penrose process and the collisional Penrose processes involve particles decaying or interacting very close to a spinning black hole, in which some particles acquire negative energy and fall into the black hole while others…
We explore spinning, precessing, unequal mass binary black holes to display the long term orbital angular momentum, $\vec{L}$, flip dynamics. We study two prototypical cases of binaries with mass ratios $q=1/7$ and $q=1/15$ and a misaligned…
After recalling the conceptual foundations and the basic structure of general relativity, we review some of its main modern developments (apart from cosmology) : (i) the post-Newtonian limit and weak-field tests in the solar system, (ii)…
The recent observation of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration provides a unique opportunity to probe the extreme gravity of coalescing binary black holes. In this regime, the gravitational interaction is not only strong, but…
The initial results from timing observations of PSR J1141-6545, a relativistic pulsar white-dwarf binary system, are presented. Predictions from the timing baseline hint at the most stringent test of gravity by an asymmetric binary yet. The…
We develop a unified framework for testing gravity beyond General Relativity (GR) with continuous gravitational waves (CWs) from individual supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). These long-lived, nearly monochromatic nanohertz signals…