arXiv subjects

Kabir Chakravarti

Publications and source records attributed to Kabir Chakravarti.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Quasinormal Ringdown and Echoes in Accreting Exotic Compact Objects

Exotic compact objects (ECOs) may produce late-time gravitational-wave (GW) echoes, but sufficiently compact ECOs undergoing realistic accretion may eventually form an event horizon. We investigate the evolution of quasinormal modes and GW echoes during this transition. Modeling the exterior spacetime with the ingoing Vaidya solution, we numerically evolve scalar perturbations on the resulting dynamical background. We show that the echo signal is progressively compressed and suppressed during accretion and disappears once the growing event horizon engulfs the reflecting surface, after which the waveform smoothly approaches the standard black hole ringdown. Our results identify the disappearance of GW echoes as a characteristic signature of horizon formation and provide a framework for studying dynamical compact objects with future GW observations.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

The impact of the formation channel on gravitational-wave-galaxy cross-correlations

The angular, harmonic cross-correlation between gravitational wave (GW) events and galaxy catalogues contains rich information on the large-scale structure and the origin of compact binary mergers. In this work, we study how uncertainties in the binary formation channel affect the predicted cross-correlation signal for both current-generation and next-generation networks of detectors. We generate five mock GW catalogues for which we vary the progenitor-to-remnant mass-transfer function and the time-delay probability distribution between progenitor and remnant. We then cross-correlate these catalogues with galaxy samples modelled on the 2MASS Photometric Redshift catalogue (2MPZ) and the Gaia-unWISE quasar catalogue (Quaia). We find that the mass-transfer function has negligible effect on the cross-correlation signal, with differences remaining within redshift uncertainties. In contrast, the time-delay distribution dramatically affects the redshift distribution of the GW events and, with it, the cross-correlation signal, particularly for shallow galaxy catalogues. In particular, current-generation facilities can achieve significant detections only for the longest time delays when cross-correlated with 2MPZ, whilst all cross-correlations with the deeper Quaia catalogue are marginally detectable or consistent with zero. Our exploratory results thus demonstrate that forecasts on cosmological or astrophysical parameters derived from GW-galaxy cross-correlations are, as expected, strongly sensitive to the assumed binary formation history.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2026

Generalized Perturbed Kepler Problem: Gravitational Wave Imprints from Eccentric Compact Binaries

Observations of astrophysical binaries may reveal departures from pure Keplerian orbits due to environmental influences, modifications to the underlying gravitational dynamics, or signatures of new physics. In this work, we develop a unified framework to systematically study such perturbations in the ambit of the perturbed Kepler problem and explore their impact on eccentric orbital dynamics and gravitational wave emission. Unlike traditional parametrized frameworks such as post-Newtonian and post-Einsteinian expansions, our approach offers a more source-specific modeling strategy, making it more natural to trace the physical origins of eccentric binary model parameters. Starting from a general perturbed potential, we derive the modified orbit and compute the associated gravitational fluxes and phase evolution, assessing their observational relevance for both current and future detectors. This framework thus offers a general and physically transparent toolkit for probing such subtle deviations from standard dynamics in gravitational wave data.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Effect of ultralight dark matter on compact binary mergers

The growing catalogue of gravitational wave events enables a statistical analysis of compact binary mergers, typically quantified by the merger rate density. This quantity can be influenced by ambient factors, following which, in this work we have investigated the impact of dark matter environment on the merger statistics. We construct a baseline astrophysical model of compact binary mergers and extend it by incorporating a model of ultra light dark matter, which affects the orbital evolution of binaries through accretion and dynamical friction. Our analysis of the merged population of binary progenitors demonstrates that, compared to the baseline model, ULDM can significantly alter the merger statistics when its ambient density becomes larger than 104GeV/cm3. A comparison with the gravitational wave data from the GWTC-3 catalogue provides insight into potential observational signatures of the ULDM in merger events, leading to possible constraints on the existence and density of dark matter distribution in galaxies.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

Tidal Love numbers and quasi-normal modes of the ECO in a Dark Matter halo

It is well-known that exotic compact objects (ECOs) are a class of objects categorised as Black Hole (BH) mimickers. ECOs have been shown to possess signatures distinguishing them from BHs. However, in our universe, no object exists in complete isolation. Consequently, any compact object, whether a BH or an ECO, must reside within some environment that inevitably influences the surrounding spacetime geometry due to back-reaction. In this paper, we investigate a scenario where an ECO is embedded in an environment of dark matter (DM). In this work, we assume two different models of the DM halo profile. We compute the Love numbers and GW echoes of this composite system to assess the impact of the surrounding dark matter halo. To analyze the echoes, we focus on odd-parity perturbations, while for calculating the tidal Love numbers, we consider both even and odd parity perturbations. We aim to understand how the DM properties couple to the ECO signatures in the Love number or the GW-echo signal, both of which have a strong bearing as observables in future-generation detectors.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Mergers of hairy black holes: Constraining topological couplings from entropy

Hairy black-holes are a unique prediction of certain theories that extend General Relativity (GR) with a scalar field. The presence of scalar hair is reflected non-trivially in the entropy of the black hole along with any topological coupling that may be present in the action. Demanding that a system of two merging black holes obeys the global second law of thermodynamics imposes a bound on this topological coupling coefficient. In this work we study how this bound is pushed from its GR value by the presence of scalar hair by considering estimates of binary black-hole merger parameters through inference studies of both mock and real gravitational-wave (GW) events. Although the scalar charge may produce a statistically significant deviation of the change in entropy over the GR prediction, we find no evidence of this happening in the data from real GW events taken from GWTC-1. We also find the entropy change to be susceptible to biases arising out of GW inferences which ends up being two orders of magnitude larger, therefore overwhelming any change, if at all, induced by the scalar hair.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Parameterized Non-circular Deviation from the Kerr Paradigm and Its Observational Signatures: Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals and Lense-Thirring Effect

Recent gravitational wave observations and shadow imaging have demonstrated the astonishing consistency of the Kerr paradigm despite all the special symmetries assumed in deriving the Kerr metric. Hence, it is crucial to test the presence of these symmetries in astrophysical scenarios and constraint possible deviations from them, especially in strong field regimes. With this motivation, the present work aims to investigate the theoretical consequences and observational signatures of non-circularity in a unified theory-agnostic manner. For this purpose, we construct a general non-circular metric with a small parameterized deviation from Kerr. This metric preserves the other properties of Kerr, such as stationarity, axisymmetry, asymptotic flatness, and the equatorial reflection symmetry. Apart from the resulting mathematical simplifications, this assumption is crucial to disentangle the consequences of relaxing circularity from other properties. Then, after discussing various novel theoretical consequences, we perform a detailed analysis of extreme mass ratio inspirals and Lense-Thirring precession in the context of this newly constructed metric. Our study clearly shows the promising prospects of detecting and constraining even a slight non-circular deviation from the Kerr paradigm using the future gravitational wave observations by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Formation and Stability of Area Quantized Black Holes

We investigate the ergoregion instability of area-quantized rotating quantum black holes (QBH) under gravitational perturbation. We show that the instability can be avoided in binary systems that include QBHs if the separation between the inspiralling components at the onset of black hole formation is less than a critical value. We also analyze the formation history of such systems from stellar progenitors and demonstrate that a significant fraction of progenitor masses cannot lead to QBH formation, making it unlikely for LIGO-Virgo black hole binaries to comprise rotating QBHs.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Probing the Impact of WIMP Dark Matter on Universal Relations, GW170817 Posterior and Radial Oscillations

In this study, we investigate the impact of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) dark matter (DM) on $C-Λ$ universal relations, GW170817 posterior and radial oscillations of neutron stars (NSs) by considering the interactions of uniformly trapped neutralinos as a DM candidate with the hadronic matter through the exchange of the Higgs boson within the framework of the Next-to-Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (NMSSM). The hadronic equation of state (EOS) is modeled using the relativistic mean-field (RMF) formalism with IOPB-I, G3, and QMC-RMF series parameter sets. Presence of DM softens the EOS at both the background and the perturbation levels that implies a small shift to the left in the posterior accompanied by a much larger jump in the left of the mass-radius curves with increasing DM mass. It is observed that EOSs with DM also satisfy the $C-Λ$ universality relations among their-selves but get slightly shifted to the right in comparison to that without considering DM. Additionally, we find that the inclusion of DM allows the mass-radius ($M-R$) curves to remain consistent with observational constraints for HESS J1731-347, indicating the possibility of classifying it as a dark matter-admixed neutron star (DMANS). Moreover, we explore the impact of DM on the radial oscillations of pulsating stars and investigate the stability of NSs. The results demonstrate a positive correlation between the mass of DM and the frequencies of radial oscillation modes.

nucl-th↗

arXiv2023

Probing beyond-$Λ$CDM cosmology with Gravitational Waves

The propagation of Gravitational Waves has been reliably recognised as a test-bed for beyond standard models of gravity and cosmology. We utilise this property to examine the effects of a class of parametrised beyond-$Λ$CDM cosmology on inferece of GW parameters. We find that the combined beyond-$Λ$CDM likelihood function exhibits correlations between the parameters which are especially dependent upon binary eccentricity. Expanding on previous results, we demonstrate through Fisher forecasts that we would need nearly 1 year of 3G GW data to be able to infer the beyond-$Λ$CDM model to $2σ$ significance. We also find counter-intuitively that errors of source-modelling leave large biases upon the inference of the beyond-$Λ$CDM parameters which come into play only during GW propagation.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Prospects for constraining twin stars with next-generation gravitational-wave detectors

Neutron star equations of state with strong phase transitions may support twin stars, hybrid and hadronic stars with the same mass but different tidal deformabilities. The presence of twin stars in the population of merging neutron stars produces distinctive gaps in the joint distribution of binary tidal deformabilities and chirp masses. We analyze a simulated population of binary neutron star mergers recovered with a network of next-generation (XG) ground-based gravitational-wave detectors to determine how many observations are needed to infer, or rule out, the existence of twin stars. Using a hierarchical inference framework based on a simple parametric twin-star model, we find that a single week of XG observations may suffice to detect a tidal deformability difference of several hundred between twins and measure the mass scale at which twins occur to within a few percent. For less pronounced twins, XG observations will place a stringent upper bound on the tidal deformability difference.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2022

Constraining the topological Gauss-Bonnet coupling from GW150914

Recent gravitational wave observation based on the data from GW150914 has confirmed Hawking's area theorem and estimated the increase in total horizon area during a merger process of two Kerr black holes. We use this result and the validity of the second law to obtain the first observational bound on the 4D topological Gauss-Bonnet coupling as $γ\lesssim 2.804^{+7.946}_{-1.169} \times 10^{9}\, m^2$ with $95 \%$ credibility.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Kilohertz Gravitational Waves From Binary Neutron Star Mergers: Numerical-relativity Informed Postmerger Model

We present ${\tt NRPMw}$, an analytical model of gravitational-waves from neutron star merger remnants informed using 618 numerical relativity (NR) simulations. ${\tt NRPMw}$ is designed in the frequency domain using a combination of complex Gaussian wavelets. The wavelet's parameters are calibrated to equations of state (EOS) insensitive relations from NR data. The NR simulations are computed with 21 EOS (7 of which are finite-temperature microphysical models, and 3 of which contain quark phase transitions or hyperonic degrees of freedom) and span total binary masses $M\in[2.4,3.4]~{\rm M}_\odot$, mass ratios up to $q=2$, and (nonprecessing) dimensionless spins magnitudes up to ${0.2}$. The theoretical uncertainties of the EOS-insensitive relations are incorporated in ${\tt NRPMw}$ using recalibration parameters that enhance the flexibility and accuracy of the model. ${\tt NRPMw}$ is NR-faithful with fitting factors ${\gtrsim}0.9$ computed on an independent validation set of 102 simulations.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Signature of Non-uniform Area Quantization on Black Hole Echoes

A classical black hole is characterized by a horizon that absorbs radiation of all frequencies incident on it. Perturbation of these black holes is well-understood via exponentially damped sinusoids known as quasi-normal modes. Any departure from such classical behavior near the horizon may induce significant modifications in the late time evolution of the perturbation leading to so-called gravitational wave echoes. This work considers the effect of black hole area-quantization on the formation of gravitational wave echoes. We investigate how the resulting echo waveform may depend on various model parameters. Our study opens up a new window to distinguish different models of area quantization using future gravitational wave observations and provides a novel probe to study the near horizon physics.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Signature of Non-uniform Area Quantization on Gravitational Waves

Quantum aspects of black holes may have observational imprints on their absorption and emission spectrum. In this work, we consider the possibility of non-uniform area quantization and its effects on the phasing of gravitational waveform from coalescing black hole inspirals. These observations may provide detectable effects distinct from that of a uniform area quantization and allow us to put bounds on various parameters of the underlying model. Our work can also be regarded as a novel test for the area-entropy proportionality of black hole solutions in general relativity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Constraining extra-spatial dimensions with observations of GW170817

We derive the modifications introduced by extra-spatial dimensions beyond the four dimensional spacetime on the macroscopic properties of neutron stars, which in turn affect the gravitational wave spectrum of their binaries. It turns out that the mass-radius relation of the neutron stars, and their tidal deformability, are affected non-trivially by the presence of extra dimensions, and can be used to constrain parameters associated with those dimensions. Implications for I-Love-Q universality relations are also discussed and utilized to obtain a constraint on one such parameter. Importantly, we show, for the first time, that measurements of the component masses and tidal deformabilities of the binary neutron star system GW170817, constrain the brane tension in the single brane-world model of Randall and Sundrum to be greater than $35.1~\textrm{GeV}^{4}$. This work opens up the possibility of making such a constraint more robust by improving the modelling of binaries on the brane in the future.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Tidal Love Numbers of Black Holes and Neutron Stars in the Presence of Higher Dimensions: Implications of GW170817

We calculate the tidal Love numbers of black holes and neutron stars in the presence of higher dimensions. The perturbation equations around an arbitrary static and spherically symmetric metric for the even parity modes are presented in the context of an effective four-dimensional theory on the brane. This subsequently leads to the sought expression for the tidal Love number for black holes in the presence of extra spatial dimensions. Surprisingly, these numbers are non-zero and, more importantly, negative. We extend our method to determine the tidal Love number of neutron stars in a spacetime inheriting extra dimensions and show that, in the context of effective gravitational theory on the brane, they are smaller than in general relativity. Finally we have explicitly demonstrated that earlier constraints on the parameters inherited from higher dimensions are consistent with the bound on the tidal deformability parameter from the GW170817 event as well.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

Systematic effects from black hole-neutron star waveform model uncertainties on the neutron star equation of state

We identify various contributors of systematic effects in the measurement of the neutron star (NS) tidal deformability and quantify their magnitude for several types of neutron star - black hole (NSBH) binaries. Gravitational waves from NSBH mergers contain information about the components' masses and spins as well as the NS equation of state. Extracting this information requires comparison of the signal in noisy detector data with theoretical templates derived from some combination of post-Newtonian (PN) approximants, effective one-body (EOB) models and %analytic fits to numerical relativity (NR) simulations. The accuracy of these templates is limited by errors in the NR simulations, by the approximate nature of the PN/EOB waveforms, and by the hybridization procedure used to combine them. In this paper, we estimate the impact of these errors by constructing and comparing a set of PN-NR hybrid waveforms, for the first time with NR waveforms from two different codes, namely, SpEC and SACRA, for such systems. We then attempt to recover the parameters of the binary using two non-precessing template approximants. We find that systematic errors are too large for tidal effects to be accurately characterized for any realistic NS equation of state model. We conclude that NSBH waveform models must be significantly improved if they are to be useful for the extraction of NS equation of state information or even for distinguishing NSBH systems from binary black holes.

gr-qc↗