Related papers: Theory-agnostic framework for dynamical scalarizat…
Under the assumption that a dynamical scalar field is responsible for the current acceleration of the Universe, we explore the possibility of probing its physics in black hole merger processes with gravitational wave interferometers.…
The dynamics of symmetry breaking is an important issue in many branches of physics including the real time onset of the Higgs-effect. In this thesis I examine the linear and non-linear evolution of different systems in the broken symmetric…
Gravity theories that modify General Relativity in the slow-motion regime can introduce nonperturbative corrections to the stochastic gravitational-wave background~(SGWB) from supermassive black-hole binaries in the nano-Hertz band, while…
An additional scalar degree of freedom for a gravitational wave is often predicted in theories of gravity beyond general relativity and can be used for a model-agnostic test of gravity. In this letter, we report the direct search for the…
The plunge-merger stage of the binary-black hole coalescence, when the bodies' velocities reach a large fraction of the speed of light and the gravitational-wave luminosity peaks, provides a unique opportunity to probe gravity in the…
Since general relativity is the unique theory of massless spin 2 particles at large distances, the most reasonable way to have significant modifications is to introduce one or more light scalars that mediate a new long-range force. Most…
It is known that the cosmological constant can be dynamically tuned to an arbitrary small value in classes of scalar tensor theories. The trouble with such schemes is that effective gravity itself vanishes. We explore the possibility of…
General Relativity (GR) remains the most accurate theory of gravity to date. It has passed many experimental tests in the Solar System as well as binary pulsar, cosmological and gravitational-wave (GW) observations. Some of these tests…
We propose a generalisation of the Weak Gravity Conjecture in the presence of scalar fields. The proposal is guided by properties of extremal black holes in ${\cal N}=2$ supergravity, but can be understood more generally in terms of…
Recently, a new nonlinear mechanism for black hole scalarization, different from the standard spontaneous scalarization, was demonstrated to exist for scalar Gauss-Bonnet theories in which no tachyonic instabilities can occur. Thus…
In this thesis, we use numerical relativity to investigate gravitational waves from binary black holes in extensions of GR. We first study spherically symmetric gravitational collapse in cubic Horndeski theories of gravity. By varying the…
Effective field theory methods suggest that some rather-general extensions of General Relativity include, or are mimicked by, certain higher-order curvature corrections, with coupling constants expected to be small but otherwise arbitrary.…
In the framework of the dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, we study the scalar field perturbations of the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m-Melvin spacetime, which describes a charged black hole permeated by a uniform magnetic field. In the presence of…
In this work we explore the dynamics of the generalized hybrid metric-Palatini theory of gravity in the weak-field, slow-motion regime. We start by introducing the equivalent scalar-tensor representation of the theory, which contains two…
We present, in closed analytic form, a general stationary, slowly rotating black hole, which is solution to a large class of alternative theories of gravity in four dimensions. In these theories, the Einstein-Hilbert action is supplemented…
The direct detection of gravitational waves (GWs) opened a new chapter in the modern cosmology to probe possible deviations from the general relativity (GR) theory. In the present work, we investigate for the first time the modified GW form…
Studying the dynamical, nonlinear regime of modified theories of gravity remains a theoretical challenge that limits our ability to test general relativity. Here we consider two generally applicable, but approximate methods for treating…
Gravity theories with non-minimally coupled scalar fields are used as characteristic examples in order to demonstrate the challenges, pitfalls and future perspectives of considering alternatives to general relativity. These lecture notes…
We discuss the possibility of a scalar field being the fundamental description of dark energy. We focus on shift-symmetric scalar-tensor theories since this symmetry potentially avoids some fine-tuning problems. We also restrict attention…
The observation of gravitational waves emitted during the merging phase of compact binary coalescing objects has opened a new field of investigation in fundamental physics. It is now possible to test the predictions of General Relativity…