Related papers: Gravitational Atom Spectroscopy
Ultralight bosons can form macroscopic gravitational-atom clouds around rotating black holes via superradiance, sourcing quasi-monochromatic gravitational waves through level transitions and annihilation. Primordial black holes provide a…
Using black hole perturbation theory, we calculate the gravitational waves produced by test particles moving on bound geodesic orbits about rotating black holes. The orbits we consider are generic - simultaneously eccentric and inclined.…
Quantum Gravity remains elusive, largely because its observable effects are suppressed by powers of the Planck scale. Direct detection of single gravitons is widely believed to be impossible. Here we propose a concrete astrophysical…
After black holes collide, the remnant settles to a stationary state by emitting gravitational waves. Once non-linearities subside, these ringdown waves are dominated by exponentially-damped sinusoids, or quasinormal modes. We develop a…
A rotating black hole can be clouded by light bosons via superradiance, and thus acquire an atom-like structure. If such a gravitational atom system is companioned with a pulsar, the pulsar can trigger transitions between energy levels of…
The low-energy dynamics of any system admitting a continuum of static configurations is approximated by slow motion in moduli (configuration) space. Here, following Ferrell and Eardley, this moduli space approximation is utilized to study…
The past decade has transformed our ability to observe the Universe. Via gravitational waves, merging black holes and neutron stars can now be directly detected, offering unprecedented opportunities to test General Relativity and explore…
We develop a relativistic perturbation theory for scalar clouds around rotating black holes. We first introduce a relativistic product and corresponding orthogonality relation between modes, extending a recent result for gravitational…
We present new spherically symmetric solutions of the Einstein-Klein-Gordon equations in a quasi-stationary approximation that describe self-gravitating scalar field configurations around a black hole, including angular momentum number…
Fundamental fields are a natural outcome in cosmology and particle physics and might therefore serve as a proxy for more complex interactions. The equivalence principle implies that all forms of matter gravitate, and one therefore expects…
Our aim in this work is to outline some physical consequences of the interaction between black holes and scalar field halos in terms of gravitational waves. In doing so, the black hole is taken as a static and spherically symmetric…
Due to superradiant instabilities, clouds of ultralight bosons can spontaneously grow around rotating black holes, creating so-called "gravitational atoms". In this work, we study their dynamical effects on binary systems. We first focus on…
Recent perturbative studies have shown the existence of long-lived, quasi-stationary configurations of scalar fields around black holes. In particular, such configurations have been found to survive for cosmological timescales, which is a…
Is the graviton massless? This problem was addressed in the literature at a phenomenological level, using modified dispersion relations for gravitational waves, in linearized calculations around flat space. Here, we perform a detailed…
Gravitational waves open the possibility to investigate the nature of compact objects and probe the horizons of black holes. Some models of modified gravity predict the presence of horizonless and singularity-free compact objects. Such dark…
Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) is a theory that proposes a way to model the behavior of the spacetime in situations where its atomic characteristic arises. Among these situations, the spacetime behavior near the Big Bang or black hole's…
A spinning black hole with a much smaller black hole companion forms a fundamental gravitational system, like a colossal classical analog to an atom. In an appealing if imperfect analogy to atomic physics, this gravitational atom can be…
The gravitational waves emitted by massive black hole binaries can be affected by a variety of environmental effects, which, if detected, could inform astrophysics and cosmology. We here study how gravitational waves emitted by black holes…
After a long wait, gravitational wave astronomy has finally begun. Binary black hole mergers are being detected by LIGO and Virgo, and theorists are starting to receive a wealth of data to be analized. At this point we can at long last…
Quasinormal mode (QNM) gravitational radiation from black holes is expected to be observed in a few years. A perturbative formula is derived for the shifts in both the real and the imaginary part of the QNM frequencies away from those of an…