Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1610.05370

An accurate metric for the spacetime around neutron stars

George Pappas
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

The problem of having an accurate description of the spacetime around neutron stars is of great astrophysical interest. For astrophysical applications, one needs to have a metric that captures all the properties of the spacetime around a neutron star. Furthermore, an accurate appropriately parameterised metric, i.e., a metric that is given in terms of parameters that are directly related to the physical structure of the neutron star, could be used to solve the inverse problem, which is to infer the properties of the structure of a neutron star from astrophysical observations. In this work we present such an approximate stationary and axisymmetric metric for the exterior of neutron stars, which is constructed using the Ernst formalism and is parameterised by the relativistic multipole moments of the central object. This metric is given in terms of an expansion on the Weyl-Papapetrou coordinates with the multipole moments as free parameters and is shown to be extremely accurate in capturing the physical properties of a neutron star spacetime as they are calculated numerically in general relativity. Because the metric is given in terms of an expansion, the expressions are much simpler and easier to implement, in contrast to previous approaches. For the parameterisation of the metric in general relativity, the recently discovered universal 3-hair relations are used to produce a 3-parameter metric. Finally, a straightforward extension of this metric is given for scalar-tensor theories with a massless scalar field, which also admit a formulation in terms of an Ernst potential.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcastro-ph.HE

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

George Pappas. 2016-10-17. An accurate metric for the spacetime around neutron stars. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras%2Fstx019

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗