Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2207.00905

Bound states of the Dirac equation in Schwarzschild spacetime: an exploration of intuition for the curious student

Paul M. Alsing
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

In this work we explore the possibility of quantum bound states in a Schwarzschild gravitational field leveraging the analogy of the elementary derivation of bound states in the Coulomb potential as taught in an undergraduate course in Quantum Mechanics. For this we will also need to go beyond non-relativistic quantum mechanics and utilize the relativistic Dirac equation for a central potential as taught in an advanced undergraduate or first year graduate (special) relativistic quantum mechanics course. Finally, the special relativistic Dirac equation must be extended to the general relativistic version for curved spacetime. All these disparate component pieces exist in excellent, very readable textbooks written for the student reader, with sufficient detail for a curious student to learn and explore. We pull all these threads together in order to explore a very natural question that a student might ask: "If the effective $1/r$ radial potential of the Schwarzschild metric (with angular momentum barrier), as taught in elementary GR courses for undergraduates, appears Newtonian-like (with a $1/r^3$ correction), then is it possible to derive quantum bound states in the Schwarzschild spacetime by simply changing the radial potential $V(r)$ from $V_C(r)=-e^2/r$ to $V_{Schw}=-G M m/r$?"

Explore related subjects

gr-qcquant-ph

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Paul M. Alsing. 2022-07-02. Bound states of the Dirac equation in Schwarzschild spacetime: an exploration of intuition for the curious student. https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.00905

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↗