Related papers: Towards a classification of wave catastrophes
In diffraction catastrophes such as the rainbow the wave nature of light resolves ray singularities and draws delicate interference patterns. In quantum catastrophes such as the black hole the quantum nature of light resolves wave…
An analytical model that represents the collapse of a massless scalar wave packet with continuous self-similarity is constructed, and critical phenomena are found. In the supercritical case, the mass of black holes is finite and has the…
Catastrophes are at the heart of many fascinating optical phenomena. The rainbow, for example, is a ray catastrophe where light rays become infinitely intense. The wave nature of light resolves the infinities of ray catastrophes while…
In the theory of optical gap solitons, slowly-moving finite-amplitude Lorentzian solutions are found to mediate the transition from bright to coexistent dark-antidark solitary wave pairs when the laser frequency is detuned out of the proper…
Waves propagating near an event horizon display interesting features including logarithmic phase singularities and caustics. We consider an acoustic horizon in a flowing Bose-Einstein condensate where the elementary excitations obey the…
We study scattering of waves by black holes. Solving a massless scalar field with a point source in the Schwarzschild spacetime, waves scattered by the black hole is obtained numerically. We then reconstruct images of the black hole from…
Perturbations form an important section of black hole analyses. This paper deals with the effect of perturbations as in the delineation of waves that occur. It makes use of the spin coefficients from [3] to represent the general equations…
Tidal effects on clumps of material during random non-stationary accretion onto a black hole produce phenomena with distinct temporal characteristics in observed light-curves. During such non-stationary accretion events, the shape of the…
Steady linear gravity waves of small amplitude travelling on a current of constant vorticity are found. For negative vorticity we show the appearance of internal waves and vortices, wherein the particle trajectories are not any more closed…
A pair of simple wave equations is presented for the symmetric gravitational and electromagnetic perturbations of a charged black hole. One of the equations is uncoupled, and the other has a source term given by the solution of the first…
Fine-tuning generic but smooth spherically-symmetric initial data for general relativity to the threshold of dynamical black hole formation creates arbitrarily large curvatures, mediated by a universal self-similar solution that acts as an…
Singularities, i.e. places of discontinuities of parameters are extremely general objects appearing in electromagnetic waves and thus are the key to understanding fundamental wave processes. These structures commonly occur in purely…
We consider a class of quasiregular singularities characterized by points possessing two future-directed light cones and two past-directed light cones. Such singularities appear in the $1+1$ trousers spacetime and the Deutsch-Politzer…
The light-like limit of the Kerr gravitational field relative to a distant observer moving rectilinearly in an arbitrary direction is an impulsive plane gravitational wave with a singular point on its wave front. By colliding particles with…
We prove a new type of finite time blow-up for a class of semilinear wave equations on extremal black holes. The initial data can be taken to be arbitrarily close to the trivial data. The first singularity occurs along the (degenerate)…
We study collective phenomena of self-propagating particles using the nonlinear Kramers equation. A solitary wave state appears from an instability of the spatially uniform ordered state with nonzero average velocity. Two solitary waves…
We consider the simplest instabilities involving multiple unstable electrostatic plasma waves corresponding to four-dimensional systems of mode amplitude equations. In each case the coupled amplitude equations are derived up to third order…
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…
The recent detections of gravitational waves from binary systems of black holes are in remarkable agreement with the predictions of General Relativity. In this pedagogical mini-review, I will go through the physics of the different phases…
Phase singularities are locations where light is twisted like a corkscrew, with positive or negative topological charge depending on the twisting direction. Among the multitude of singularities arising in random wave fields, some can be…