arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to David Garfinkle.
Two different approaches to gravitational perturbation theory appear to give two different answers for the properties of gravitational wave memory. We show that this contradiction is only apparent and the two approaches actually agree.
We examine a simple example of gravitational wave memory due to the decay of a point particle into two point particles. In the case where one of the decay products is null, there are two types of memory: a null memory due to the null particle and an ordinary memory due to the recoiling timelike particle. In the case where both decay products are timelike, there is only ordinary memory. However, this ordinary memory can mimic the null memory in the limit where one of the decay products has a large velocity.
We present a perturbative treatment of gravitational wave memory. The coordinate invariance of Einstein's equations leads to a type of gauge invariance in perturbation theory. As with any gauge invariant theory, results are more clear when expressed in terms of manifestly gauge invariant quantities. Therefore we derive all our results from the perturbed Weyl tensor rather than the perturbed metric. We derive gravitational wave memory for the Einstein equations coupled to a general energy-momentum tensor that reaches null infinity.
GGR News: we hear that... 100 years ago GGR program at the APS meeting in Savannah, GA Conference reports: GR20/Amaldi10 Conference in Warsaw, Poland School and workshop on quantum gravity in Brazil
We perform a linear stability analysis of dynamical Chern-Simons modified gravity in the geometric optics approximation and find that it is linearly stable on the backgrounds considered. Our analysis also reveals that gravitational waves in the modified theory travel at the speed of light in Minkowski spacetime. However, on a Schwarzschild background the characteristic speed of propagation along a given direction splits into two modes, one subluminal and one superluminal. The width of the splitting depends on the azimuthal components of the propagation vector, is linearly proportional to the mass of the black hole, and decreases with the third inverse power of the distance from the black hole. Radial propagation is unaffected, implying that as probed by gravitational waves the location of the event horizon of the spacetime is unaltered. The analysis further reveals that when a high frequency, pure gravitational wave is scattered from a black hole, a scalar wave of comparable amplitude is excited, and vice-versa.
GGR News: we hear that..., by David Garfinkle What's new in LIGO, by David Shoemaker News from NSF, by Pedro Marronetti Citation counts and indicies: Beware of bad data, by Clifford Will Research Briefs: Results from Planck, by William Jones Conference Reports: Gravity- Strings and Higher Dimensions, by Simon Ross Capra 16, by Leor Barack Reduced Order Modeling in General Relativity, by Michele Vallisneri
We present an electromagnetic analog of gravitational wave memory. That is, we consider what change has occurred to a detector of electromagnetic radiation after the wave has passed. Rather than a distortion in the detector, as occurs in the gravitational wave case, we find a residual velocity (a "kick") to the charges in the detector. In analogy with the two types of gravitational wave memory ("ordinary" and "nonlinear") we find two types of electromagnetic kick.
We describe neutrino radiation in general relativity by introducing the energy-momentum tensor of a null fluid into the Einstein equations. Investigating the geometry and analysis at null infinity, we prove that a component of the null fluid enlarges the Christodoulou memory effect of gravitational waves. The description of neutrinos in general relativity as a null fluid can be regarded as a limiting case of a more general description using the massless limit of the Einstein-Vlasov system. The present authors with co-authors have work in progress to generalize the results of this paper using this more general description. Gigantic neutrino bursts occur in our universe in core-collapse supernovae and in the mergers of neutron star binaries.
In bouncing cosmology, the primordial fluctuations are generated in a cosmic contraction phase before the bounce into the current expansion phase. For a nonsingular bounce, curvature and anisotropy grow rapidly during the bouncing phase, raising questions about the reliability of perturbative analysis. In this paper, we study the evolution of adiabatic perturbations in a nonsingular bounce by nonperturbative methods including numerical simulations of the nonsingular bounce and the covariant formalism for calculating nonlinear perturbations. We show that the bounce is disrupted in regions of the universe with significant inhomogeneity and anisotropy over the background energy density, but is achieved in regions that are relatively homogeneous and isotropic. Sufficiently small perturbations, consistent with observational constraints, can pass through the nonsingular bounce with negligible alteration from nonlinearity. We follow scale invariant perturbations generated in a matter-like contraction phase through the bounce. Their amplitude in the expansion phase is determined by the growing mode in the contraction phase, and the scale invariance is well preserved across the bounce.
We investigate numerical methods for wave equations in $n+2$ spacetime dimensions, written in spherical coordinates, decomposed in spherical harmonics on $S^n$, and finite-differenced in the remaining coordinates $r$ and $t$. Such an approach is useful when the full physical problem has spherical symmetry, for perturbation theory about a spherical background, or in the presence of boundaries with spherical topology. The key numerical difficulty arises from lower-order $1/r$ terms at the origin $r=0$. As a toy model for this, we consider the flat space linear wave equation in the form $\dotπ=ψ'+pψ/r$, $\dotψ=π'$, where $p=2l+n$, and $l$ is the leading spherical harmonic index. We propose a class of summation by parts (SBP) finite differencing methods that conserve a discrete energy up to boundary terms, thus guaranteeing stability and convergence in the energy norm. We explicitly construct SBP schemes that are second and fourth-order accurate at interior points and the symmetry boundary $r=0$, and first and second-order accurate at the outer boundary $r=R$.
GGR News: we hear that... 100 years ago GGR program at the APS meeting in Denver, CO
Methods are presented for finding Killing-Yano tensors, conformal Killing-Yano tensors, and conformal Killing vectors in spacetimes with a hypersurface orthogonal Killing vector. These methods are similar to a method developed by the authors for finding Killing tensors. In all cases one decomposes both the tensor and the equation it satisfies into pieces along the Killing vector and pieces orthogonal to the Killing vector. Solving the separate equations that result from this decomposition requires less computing than integrating the original equation. In each case, examples are given to illustrate the method.
GGR News: we hear that..., by David Garfinkle 100 years ago, by David Garfinkle New publisher and new book, by Vesselin Petkov Research Briefs: Dark matter news, by Katie Freese LARES satellite, by Richard Matzner Conference reports: Workshop on gravitational wave bursts, by Pablo Laguna JoshFest, by Ed Glass Electromagnetic and gravitational wave astronomy, by Sean McWilliams Bits, branes, and black holes, by Ted Jacobson and Don Marolf
We discuss the set of constraints for Einstein-aether theories, comparing the flat background case with what is expected when the gravitational fields are dynamic. We note potential pathologies occurring in the weak gravitational field limit for some of the Einstein-aether theories.
GGR News: News From NSF, by David Garfinkle We hear that..., by David Garfinkle GGR Program at the APS meeting in Atlanta, GA, by David Garfinkle Research Briefs: AdS instability, by David Garfinkle Conference reports: Isenberg Fest, by Robert M. Wald COSMO 11, by Carlos Martins Astro-GR 6 2011, by Sascha Husa et al
Motivated by its field theory interpretation, we study gravitational collapse of a minimally coupled massless scalar field in Einstein gravity with a negative cosmological constant. After demonstrating the accuracy of the numerical algorithm for the questions we are interested in, we investigate various aspects of the apparent horizon formation. In particular, we study the time and radius of the apparent horizon formed as functions of the initial Gaussian profile for the scalar field. We comment on several aspects of the dual field theory picture.
Motivated by the duality with thermalization in field theory, we study gravitational collapse of a minimally coupled massless scalar field in Einstein gravity with a negative cosmological constant. We investigate the system numerically and establish that for small values of the initial amplitude of the scalar field there is no black hole formation, rather, the scalar field performs an oscillatory motion typical of geodesics in AdS. For large enough values of the amplitude of the scalar field we find black hole formation which we detect numerically as the emergence of an apparent horizon. Using the time of formation as an estimate for thermalization in the field theory we conclude that thermalization occurs very rapidly, close to the causal bound for a very wide range of black hole masses. We further study the thermalization time in more detail as a function of the amplitude and the width of the initial Gaussian scalar field profile and detect a rather mild structure.
Numerical simulations are performed of the gravitational collapse of a scalar field with a λϕ^4 potential. Comparisons are made with the thin shell approximation.