Strong Gravity

The Kerr metric of vacuum general relativity is expected to describe astrophysical black holes. Boson stars, on the other hand, are one of the simplest gravitating solitons, suggested as astrophysical compact objects, black holes mimickers and as dark matter candidates. Kerr black holes with scalar hair, found in [1], continuously interpolate between these two types of, per se, physically interesting solutions. I will describe the construction of these solutions and discuss theoretical, astrophysical and high energy physics aspects and challenges for Kerr black holes with scalar hair.

References:

[1] Kerr black holes with scalar hair, Carlos A. R. Herdeiro, Eugen Radu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112 (2014) 221101; e-Print: arXiv:1403.2757

[2] A new spin on black hole hair, C. Herdeiro, E. Radu, International Journal of Modern Physics D 23 (2014) 1442014; e-Print: arXiv: 1405.3696;

[3] Construction and physical properties of Kerr black holes with scalar hair, C. Herdeiro and E. Radu, arXiv:1501.04319 [gr-qc]; Focus Issue on "Black holes and fundamental fields" to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravity

I will describe a new proposal for defining the holographic
entanglement entropy at subleading orders in N (on the boundary) or
hbar (in the bulk). This involves a new concept of "quantum extremal
surfaces" defined as the surface which extremizes the sum of the area
and the bulk entanglement entropy. This conjecture reduces to
previous conjectures in suitable limits, and satisfies some nontrivial
consistency checks. Based on arXiv:1408.3203

The mass of a black hole has traditionally been identified with its energy. We describe a new perspective on black hole thermodynamics, one that identifies the mass of a black hole with chemical enthalpy, and the cosmological constant as thermodynamic pressure. This leads to an understanding of black holes from the viewpoint of chemistry, in terms of concepts such as Van derWaals fluids, reentrant phase transitions, and triple points. Both charged and rotating
black holes exhibit novel chemical-type phase behaviour, hitherto unseen.

Gravitational waves (GW) imprint apparent Doppler shifts on the frequency of photons propagating between an emitter and detector of light. This forms the basis of a method to detect mHz GW using Doppler velocimetry between pairs of satellites [1]. The crucial component in such GW detectors is the frequency standard on board the emitting and receiving satellites. I will discuss how recent developments in atomic clock technology have led to devices that could be sufficiently sensitive to probe astrophysically interesting sources. I will present a design for a robust, space-capable optical frequency standard [2], that is being developed at York.

References

[1] JW Armstrong, Living Rev. Relativity 9, (2006), 1 [2] AC Vutha, arXiv:1501.01733 (2015)

Generic binary black holes have spins that are misaligned with their orbital angular momentum. When the binary separation between the black holes is large compared to their gravitational radii, the timescale on which the spins precess is much shorter than the radiation-reaction time on which the orbital angular momentum decreases due to gravitational-wave emission. We use conservation of the total angular momentum and the projected effective spin on the precession time to derive an effective potential for BBH spin precession. This effective potential allows us to solve the orbit-averaged spin-precession equations analytically for arbitrary mass ratios and spins. These solutions are quasiperiodic functions of time: after a precessional period the spins return to their initial relative orientations. We classify black-hole spin precession into three distinct morphologies between which the black holes can transition during their inspiral. Our new solutions constitute fundamental progress in our understanding of black-hole spin precession and also have important applications to astrophysical black holes. We derive a precession-averaged evolution equation that can be numerically integrated on the radiation-reaction time, allowing us to statistically track black-hole spins from formation to merger. This will greatly help us predict the signatures of black-hole formation in the gravitational waves emitted near merger and the distributions of final spins and gravitational recoils.

With recent advancement of experimental physics, macroscopic objects, which are typically well-described by classical physics, can now be isolated so well from their environment, that their quantum uncertainties can be studied quantitatively. In the research field called “optomechanics”, mechanical motions of masses from picograms to kilograms are being prepared into nearly pure quantum states, and observed at time scales ranging from nanoseconds to milliseconds. In practice, optomechanics experiments have been constructed to measure extremely weak classical forces, e.g., due to gravitational waves, acting on macroscopic test objects. In this case, experiments must be designed in such a way that quantum uncertainties of the test objects are avoided as much as possible --- often by employing the quantum correlations between the state of light and the motion of the test object, which can build up during the measurement process.

Optomechanics experiments can also be used to search for possible deviations from standard quantum mechanics when macroscopic objects are involved. In this case, experiments are designed to highlight as much as possible the quantum-state evolution of the macroscopic objects. It is hoped that these macroscopic quantum mechanics experiments will either lead our way toward new physics, or at least put experimental constraints on how standard quantum mechanics might be modified.

In AdS/CFT, the HRT prescription relates the entanglement entropy of a region of a CFT to the area of an extremal surface in the dual AdS spacetime.  But there exists a class of spacetimes in which the HRT prescription is ill-defined.  These spacetimes consist of planar AdS wormholes containing an inflating region.  I will introduce these so-called AdS-dS-wormholes, discuss how the HRT prescription fails in them, and suggest possible modifications to remedy the problem.

One version of the membrane paradigm states that as far as outside observers are concerned, black holes can be replaced by a dissipative membrane with simple physical properties located at the stretched horizon. We demonstrate that such a membrane paradigm is incomplete in several aspects. We argue that it generically fails to capture the massive quasinormal modes, unless we replace the stretched horizon by the exact event horizon, and illustrate this with a scalar field in a BTZ black hole background. We also consider as a concrete example linearized metric perturbations of a five-dimensional AdS-Schwarzschild black brane and show that a spurious excitation appears in the long-wavelength response that is only removed from the spectrum when the membrane paradigm is replaced by ingoing boundary conditions at the event horizon. We interpret this excitation in terms of an additional Goldstone boson that appears due to symmetry breaking by the classical solution ending on the stretched horizon rather than the event horizon.

Based on arXiv:1405.4243

A prime challenge to our understanding of galaxy formation concerns the scarcity of dwarf galaxies compared with the numerous low-mass halos expected in the current ΛCDM paradigm. This is usually accounted for by assuming that energetic feedback from evolving stars confines dwarf galaxy formation to relatively massive halos spanning a narrow mass range. I will highlight a number of observations that may be used to test this assumption and discuss the puzzles and challenges that arise from this analysis. I will also discuss a number of challenges that ΛCDM faces on the scale of dwarf galaxies and their possible resolutions.