arXiv subjects

Kent Yagi

Publications and source records attributed to Kent Yagi.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Repeating Fast Radio Bursts from Neutron Star Binaries: Multi-band and Multi-messenger Opportunities

Recent observations indicate that magnetars may commonly reside in merging compact binaries and at least part of fast radio bursts (FRBs) are sourced by magnetar activities. It is natural to speculate that a class of merging neutron star binaries may have FRB emitters. In this work, we study the observational aspects of these binaries - particularly those with FRB repeaters, which are promising multi-band and multi-messenger observation targets of radio telescopes and ground based gravitational wave detectors as the former telescopes can probe the systems at a much earlier stage in the inspiral than the latter. We show that observations of FRB repeaters in compact binaries have a significant advantage in pinning down the binary spin dynamics, constraining neutron star equation of state, probing FRB production mechanisms, and testing beyond standard physics. As a proof of principle, we investigate several mock observations of FRB pulses originating from pre-merger neutron star binaries, and we find that using the information of FRB arriving times alone, the intrinsic parameters of this system (including the stellar masses, spins, and quadrupole moments) can be measured with high precision, and the angular dependence of the FRB emission pattern can also be well reconstructed. The measurement of stellar masses (with an error of $\mathcal{O}(10^{-6}-10^{-5})$) and quadrupole moments (with an error of $\mathcal{O}(1\%-10\%)$) may be an unprecedented discriminator of nuclear equations of state in neutron stars. In addition, we find the multi-band and multi-messenger observations of this binary will be sensitive to alternative theories of gravity and beyond standard models, e.g., dynamical Chern-Simons gravity and axion field that is coupled to matter.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Constraints on Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity from Black Hole-Neutron Star Gravitational Wave Events

Recent gravitational wave observations allow us to probe gravity in the strong and dynamical field regime. In this paper, we focus on testing Einstein-dilaton Gauss-Bonnet gravity which is motivated by string theory. In particular, we use two new neutron star black hole binaries (GW200105 and GW200115). We also consider GW190814 which is consistent with both a binary black hole and a neutron star black hole binary. Adopting the leading post-Newtonian correction and carrying out a Bayesian Markov-chain Monte Carlo analyses, we derive the 90\% credible upper bound on the coupling constant of the theory as $\sqrt{α_{GB}} \lesssim 1.33\,\rm km$, whose consistency is checked with an independent Fisher analysis. This bound is stronger than the bound obtained in previous literature by combining selected binary black hole events in GWTC-1 and GWTC-2 catalogs. We also derive a combined bound of $\sqrt{α_{GB}} \lesssim 1.18\,\rm km$ by stacking GW200105, GW200115, GW190814, and selected binary black hole events. In order to check the validity of the effect of higher post-Newtonian terms, we derive corrections to the waveform phase up to second post Newtonian order by mapping results in scalar-tensor theories to Einstein-dilaton Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We find that such higher-order terms improve the bounds by $14.5\%$ for GW200105 and $6.9\%$ for GW200115 respectively.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

I-Love-Q in Einstein-aether Theory

Although Lorentz symmetry is a staple of General Relativity (GR), there are several reasons to believe it may not hold in a more advanced theory of gravity, such as quantum gravity. Einstein-aether theory is a modified theory of gravity that breaks Lorentz symmetry by introducing a dynamical vector field called the aether. The theory has four coupling constants that characterize deviations from GR and that must be determined through observations. Although three of the four parameters have been constrained by various empirical observations and stability requirements, one, called $c_ω$, remains essentially unconstrained. The aim of this work is to see if a constraint on $c_ω$ can be derived from the I-Love-Q universal relations for neutron stars, which connect the neutron star moment of inertia (I), the tidal Love number (Love), and the quadrupole moment (Q) in a way that is insensitive to uncertainties in the neutron star equation-of-state. To understand if the theory can be constrained through such relations, we model slowly-rotating or weakly tidally-deformed neutron stars in Einstein-aether theory, derive their I-Love-Q relations, and study how they depend on $c_ω$. We find that the I-Love-Q relations in Einstein-aether theory are insensitive to $c_ω$ and that they are close to the relations in GR. This means that the I-Love-Q relations in Einstein-aether theory remain universal but cannot be used to constrain the theory. These results indicate that to constrain the theory with neutron stars, it is necessary to investigate relations involving other observables.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Approximate Universal Relations for Neutron Stars and Quark Stars

Neutron stars and quark stars are ideal laboratories to study fundamental physics at supra nuclear densities and strong gravitational fields. Astrophysical observables, however, depend strongly on the star's internal structure, which is currently unknown due to uncertainties in the equation of state. Universal relations, however, exist among certain stellar observables that do not depend sensitively on the star's internal structure. One such set of relations is between the star's moment of inertia ($I$), its tidal Love number (Love) and its quadrupole moment ($Q$), the so-called I-Love-Q relations. Similar relations hold among the star's multipole moments, which resemble the well-known black hole no-hair theorems. Universal relations break degeneracies among astrophysical observables, leading to a variety of applications: (i) X-ray measurements of the nuclear matter equation of state, (ii) gravitational wave measurements of the intrinsic spin of inspiraling compact objects, and (iii) gravitational and astrophysical tests of General Relativity that are independent of the equation of state. We here review how the universal relations come about and all the applications that have been devised to date.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Breaking bad degeneracies with Love relations: Improving gravitational-wave measurements through universal relations

The distance-inclination degeneracy limits gravitational-wave parameter estimation of compact binary mergers. Although the degeneracy can be partially broken by including higher-order modes or precession, these effects are suppressed in binary neutron stars. In this work, we implement a new parametrization of the tidal effects in the binary neutron-star waveform, exploiting the binary Love relations, that breaks the distance-inclination degeneracy. The binary Love relations prescribe the tidal deformability of a neutron star as a function of its source-frame mass in an equation-of-state insensitive way and, thus, allows direct measurement of the redshift of the source. If the cosmological parameters are assumed to be known, the redshift can be converted to a luminosity distance, and the distance-inclination degeneracy can thus be broken. We implement this new approach, studying a range of binary neutron-star observing scenarios using Bayesian parameter estimation on synthetic data. In the era of the third-generation detectors, for observations with signal-to-noise ratios ranging from 6 to 167, we forecast up to an $\sim70\%$ decrease in the $90\%$ credible interval of the distance and inclination and up to an $\sim50\%$ decrease in that of the source-frame component masses. For edge-on systems, our approach can result in moderate ($\sim50\%$) improvement in the measurements of distance and inclination for binaries with a signal-to-noise ratio as low as 10. This prescription can be used to better infer the source-frame masses and, hence, refine population properties of neutron stars, such as their maximum mass, impacting nuclear astrophysics. When combined with the search for electromagnetic counterpart observations, the work presented here can be used to put improved bounds on the opening angle of jets from binary neutron-star mergers.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

I-Love-Q in Hořava-Lifshitz Gravity

Hořava-Lifshitz gravity is an alternative theory to general relativity which breaks Lorentz invariance in order to achieve an ultraviolet complete and power-counting renormalizable theory of gravity. In the low energy limit, Hořava-Lifshitz gravity coincides with a vector-tensor theory known as khronometric gravity. The deviation of khronometric gravity from general relativity can be parametrized by three coupling constants: $α$, $β$, and $λ$. Solar system experiments and gravitational wave observations impose stringent bounds on $α$ and $β$, while $λ$ is still relatively unconstrained ($λ\lesssim 0.01$). In this paper, we study whether one can constrain this remaining parameter with neutron star observations through the universal I-Love-Q relations between the moment of inertia (I), the tidal Love number (Love), and the quadrupole moment (Q), which are insensitive to details in the nuclear matter equation of state. To do so, we perturbatively construct slowly-rotating and weakly tidally-deformed neutron stars in khronometric gravity. We find that the I-Love-Q relations are independent of $λ$ in the limit $(α,β) \to 0$. Although some components of the field equations depend on $λ$, we show through induction and a post-Minkowskian analysis that slowly-rotating neutron stars do not depend on $λ$ at all. Tidally deformed neutron stars, on the other hand, are modified in khronometric gravity (though the usual Love number is not modified, as mentioned earlier), and there are potentially new, non-GR Love numbers, though their observability is unclear. These findings indicate that it may be difficult to constrain $λ$ with rotating/tidally-deformed neutron stars.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Neutron stars as extreme laboratories for gravity tests

Neutron stars are versatile in their application to studying various important aspects of fundamental physics, in particular strong-field gravity tests and the equation of state for super-dense nuclear matter at low temperatures. However, in many cases these two objectives are degenerate to each other. We discuss how pulsar timing and gravitational waves provide accurate measurements of neutron star systems and how to effectively break the degeneracy using tools like universal relations. We also present perspectives on future opportunities and challenges in the field of neutron star physics.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Gravitational-wave memory effects in Brans-Dicke theory: Waveforms and effects in the post-Newtonian approximation

Gravitational-wave (GW) memory effects produce permanent shifts in the GW strain and its time integrals after the passage of a burst of GWs. Their presence is closely tied to symmetries of asymptotically flat spacetimes and fluxes of conserved charges conjugate to these symmetries. While the phenomenology of GW memory effects is well understood in general relativity (GR), it is less well understood in the many modifications to GR. We recently computed asymptotically flat solutions, symmetries, conserved quantities, and GW memory effects in one such modified theory: Brans-Dicke theory. In this paper, we apply our results from this earlier work to compute the GW memories from compact binaries in the post-Newtonian (PN) approximation. In addition to taking the PN limit of these effects, we work in the approximation that the energy and angular momentum losses through scalar radiation are small compared to the energy and angular momentum losses through (tensor) GWs. We focus on the tensor (as opposed to scalar) GW memory effect, which we compute through Newtonian order, and the small differences induced by scalar radiation at this order. Specifically, we compute the nonlinear parts of the tensor displacement and spin GW memory effects produced during the inspiral of quasicircular, nonprecessing binaries in Brans-Dicke theory. Because the energy radiated through the scalar dipole moment appears as a -1 PN order-effect, then in this approximation, the displacement memory has a logarithmic dependence on the PN parameter and the spin memory has a relative -1 PN-order correction; these corrections are ultimately small because they are related to the total energy and angular momentum radiated in the scalar field, respectively. At Newtonian order, the scalar radiation also gives rise to a sky pattern of the memory effect around an isolated source that differs from that of the memory effect in GR.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

New Horizons for Fundamental Physics with LISA

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) has the potential to reveal wonders about the fundamental theory of nature at play in the extreme gravity regime, where the gravitational interaction is both strong and dynamical. In this white paper, the Fundamental Physics Working Group of the LISA Consortium summarizes the current topics in fundamental physics where LISA observations of GWs can be expected to provide key input. We provide the briefest of reviews to then delineate avenues for future research directions and to discuss connections between this working group, other working groups and the consortium work package teams. These connections must be developed for LISA to live up to its science potential in these areas.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Equation-of-state insensitive relations after GW170817

The thermodynamic relation between pressure and density (i.e. the equation of state) of cold supranuclear matter is critical in describing neutron stars, yet it remains one of the largest uncertainties in nuclear physics. The extraction of tidal deformabilities from the gravitational waves emitted in the coalescence of neutron star binaries, such as GW170817, is a promising tool to probe this thermodynamic relation. Equation-of-state insensitive relations between symmetric and antisymmetric combinations of individual tidal deformabilities, the so-called "binary Love relations", have proven important to infer the radius of neutron stars, and thus constrain the equation of state, from such gravitational waves. A similar set of relations between the moment of inertia, the tidal deformability, the quadrupole moment, and the compactness of neutron stars, the so-called `I-Love-Q' and `C-Love' relations, allow for future tests of General Relativity in the extreme gravity regime. But even the most insensitive of such relations still presents some degree of equation-of-state variability that could introduce systematic uncertainties in parameter extraction and in model selection. We here reduce this variability by more than 50% by imposing a prior on the allowed set of equations of state, derived from the posteriors generated from the analysis of GW170817. The resulting increase in insensitivity reduces systematic uncertainties in the extraction of the tidal deformability from future gravitational wave observations, although statistical uncertainties currently dominate the error budget, and will continue to do so until the era of Voyager-class detectors.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Gravitational-Wave and X-ray Probes of the Neutron Star Equation of State

Neutron stars are a remarkable marriage of Einstein's theory of general relativity with nuclear physics. Their interiors harbor extreme matter that cannot be probed in the laboratory. At such high densities and pressures, their cores may consist predominantly of exotic matter such as free quarks or hyperons. Gravitational wave observations from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and from other interferometers, and X-ray observations from the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), are beginning to pierce through the veil. These observations provide information about neutron star cores, and therefore, about the physics that makes such objects possible. In this review, we discuss what we have learned about the physics of neutron stars from gravitational wave and X-ray observations. We focus on what has been observed with certainty and what should be observable in the near future, with an eye out for the physics that these new observations will teach us.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Analytic estimates of quasi-normal mode frequencies for black holes in General Relativity and beyond

In this chapter, we review the eikonal technique to analytically derive approximate quasi-normal mode frequencies of black holes. We first review the procedure in General Relativity and extend it to theories beyond General Relativity. As an example of the latter, we focus on scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity in which a scalar field can couple to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant in an arbitrary way in the action. In this theory, metric and scalar perturbations are coupled in the polar sector, forcing the isospectrality to break and making the eikonal calculation more complex. We show that the analytic estimates can accurately capture the numerical behavior of the quasi-normal mode frequencies, especially when the coupling constant of the theory is small.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

The Effect of Mission Duration on LISA Science Objectives

The science objectives of the LISA mission have been defined under the implicit assumption of a 4 yr continuous data stream. Based on the performance of LISA Pathfinder, it is now expected that LISA will have a duty cycle of $\approx 0.75$, which would reduce the effective span of usable data to 3 yr. This paper reports the results of a study by the LISA Science Group, which was charged with assessing the additional science return of increasing the mission lifetime. We explore various observational scenarios to assess the impact of mission duration on the main science objectives of the mission. We find that the science investigations most affected by mission duration concern the search for seed black holes at cosmic dawn, as well as the study of stellar-origin black holes and of their formation channels via multi-band and multi-messenger observations. We conclude that an extension to 6 yr of mission operations is recommended.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2021

Tidal Deformabilities of Neutron Stars in scalar-Gauss-Bonnet Gravity and Their Applications to Multimessenger Tests of Gravity

The spacetime surrounding compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes provides an excellent place to study gravity in the strong, non-linear, dynamical regime. Here, the effects of strong curvature can leave their imprint on observables which we may use to study gravity. Recently, NICER provided a mass and radius measurement of an isolated neutron star using x-rays, while LIGO/Virgo measured the tidal deformability of neutron stars through gravitational waves. These measurements can be used to test the relation between the tidal deformability and compactness of neutron stars that are known to be universal in general relativity. Here, we take (shift-symmetric) scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity (motivated by a low-energy effective theory of a string theory) as an example and study whether one can apply the NICER and LIGO/Virgo measurements to the universal relation to test the theory. To do so, this paper is mostly devoted on theoretically constructing tidally-deformed neutron star solutions in this theory perturbatively and calculate the tidal deformability for the first time. We find that the relation between the tidal deformability and compactness remains to be mostly universal for a fixed dimensionless coupling constant of the theory though the relation is different from the one in general relativity. We also present a universal relation between the tidal deformability \textbf{of} one neutron star and the compactness for another neutron star that can be directly applied to observations by LIGO/Virgo and NICER. For the equations of state considered in this paper, it is still inconclusive whether one can place a meaningful bounds on scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity with the new universal relations. However, we found a new bound from the mass measurement of the pulsar J0740+6620 that is comparable to other existing bounds from black hole observations.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Testing General Relativity with Gravitational Waves

Gravitational-wave sources offer us unique testbeds for probing strong-field, dynamical and nonlinear aspects of gravity. In this chapter, we give a brief overview of the current status and future prospects of testing General Relativity with gravitational waves. In particular, we focus on three theory-agnostic tests (parameterized tests, inspiral-merger-ringdown consistency tests, and gravitational-wave propagation tests) and explain how one can apply such tests to example modified theories of gravity. We conclude by giving some open questions that need to be resolved to carry out more accurate tests of gravity with gravitational waves.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Gravitational waves from the quasi-circular inspiral of compact binaries in Einstein-aether theory

We study gravitational waves emitted by a binary system of non-spinning bodies in a quasi-circular inspiral within the framework of Einstein-aether theory. In particular, we compute explicitly and analytically the expressions for the time-domain and frequency-domain waveforms, gravitational wave polarizations, and response functions for both ground- and space-based detectors in the post-Newtonian approximation. We find that, when going beyond leading-order in the post-Newtonian approximation, the non-Einsteinian polarization modes contain terms that depend on both the first and the second harmonics of the orbital phase. We also calculate analytically the corresponding parameterized post-Einsteinian parameters, generalizing the existing framework to allow for different propagation speeds among scalar, vector and tensor modes, without assumptions about the magnitude of its coupling parameters, and meanwhile allowing the binary system to have relative motions with respect to the aether field. Such results allow for the easy construction of Einstein-aether templates that could be used in Bayesian tests of General Relativity in the future.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Cosmology with Love: Measuring the Hubble constant using neutron star universal relations

Gravitational-wave cosmology began in 2017 with the observation of the gravitational waves emitted in the merger of two neutron stars, and the coincident observation of the electromagnetic emission that followed. Although only a $30\%$ measurement of the Hubble constant was achieved, future observations may yield more precise measurements either through other coincident events or through cross correlation of gravitational-wave events with galaxy catalogs. Here, we implement a new way to measure the Hubble constant without an electromagnetic counterpart and through the use of the binary Love relations. These relations govern the tidal deformabilities of neutron stars in an equation-of-state insensitive way. Importantly, the Love relations depend on the component masses of the binary in the source frame. Since the gravitational-wave phase and amplitude depend on the chirp mass in the observer (and hence redshifted) frame, one can in principle combine the binary Love relations with the gravitational-wave data to directly measure the redshift, and thereby infer the value of the Hubble constant. We implement this approach in both real and synthetic data through a Bayesian parameter estimation study in a range of observing scenarios. We find that for the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA design sensitivity era, this method results in a similar measurement accuracy of the Hubble constant to those of current-day, dark-siren measurements. For third generation detectors, this accuracy improves to $\lesssim 10\%$ when combining measurements from binary neutron star events in the LIGO Voyager era, and to $\lesssim 2\%$ in the Cosmic Explorer era.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Eikonal quasinormal modes of black holes beyond general relativity III: scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity

In a recent series of papers we have shown how the eikonal/geometrical optics approximation can be used to calculate analytically the fundamental quasinormal mode frequencies associated with coupled systems of wave equations, which arise, for instance, in the study of perturbations of black holes in gravity theories beyond General Relativity. As a continuation to this series, we here focus on the quasinormal modes of nonrotating black holes in scalar Gauss-Bonnet gravity assuming a small-coupling expansion. We show that the axial perturbations are purely tensorial and are described by a modified Regge-Wheeler equation, while the polar perturbations are of mixed scalar-tensor character and are described by a system of two coupled wave equations. When applied to these equations, the eikonal machinery leads to axial modes that deviate from the general relativistic results at quadratic order in the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant. We show that this result is in agreement with an analysis of unstable circular null orbits around blackholes in this theory, allowing us to establish the geometrical optics-null geodesic correspondence for the axial modes. For the polar modes the small-coupling approximation forces us to consider the ordering between eikonal and small-coupling perturbative parameters; one of which we show, by explicit comparison against numerical data, yields the correct identification of the quasinormal modes of the scalar-tensor coupled system of wave equations. These corrections lift the general relativistic degeneracy between scalar and tensorial eikonal quasinormal modes at quadratic order in Gauss-Bonnet coupling in a way reminiscent of the Zeeman effect. In general, our analytic, eikonal quasinormal mode frequencies (normalized to the General Relativity ones) agree with numerical results with an error of $\sim 10\%$ in the regime of small coupling constant. (abridged)

gr-qc↗