arXiv subjects

Leonardo Modesto

Publications and source records attributed to Leonardo Modesto.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Regular multi-horizon Lee-Wick black holes

In this paper we carry out a detailed analysis of the static spherically symmetric solutions of a sixth-derivative Lee-Wick gravity model in the effective delta source approximation. Previous studies of these solutions have only considered the particular case in which the real and the imaginary part of the Lee-Wick mass $μ=a +i b$ are equal. However, as we show here, the solutions exhibit an interesting structure when the full parameter space is considered, owing to the oscillations of the metric that depend on the ratio $b/a$. Such oscillations can generate a rich structure of horizons, a sequence of mass gaps and the existence of multiple regimes for black hole sizes (horizon position gaps). In what concerns the thermodynamics of these objects, the oscillation of the Hawking temperature determines the presence of multiple mass scales for the remnants of the evaporation process and may permit the existence of cold black holes with zero Hawking temperature $T$ and quasi-stable intermediate configurations with $T \approx 0$ and a long evaporation lifetime. For the sake of generality, we consider two families of solutions, one with a trivial shift function and the other with a non-trivial one (dirty black hole). The latter solution has the advantage of reproducing the modified Newtonian-limit metric of Lee-Wick gravity for small and large values of $r$.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Quantum interference in the Kerr spacetime

The gravitational induced interference is here studied in the framework of Teleparallel Gravity. We derive the gravitational phase difference and we apply the result to the case of a Kerr spacetime. Afterwards, we compute the fringe shifts in an interference experiment of particles and discuss how to increase their values by changing the given parameters that include: the area in between the paths, the energy of the particles, the distance from the black hole, the mass and the spin of the black hole. It turns out that it is more difficult to detect the fringe shifts for massless particles than for massive particles. As a further application, we show how the mass of the black hole and its angular momentum can be obtained from the measurement of the fringe shifts. Finally, we compare the phase difference derived in Teleparallel Gravity with a previous work in General Relativity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Renormalizability of nonlocal quantum gravity coupled to matter

We extensively study the ultraviolet quantum properties of a nonlocal action for gravity nonminimally coupled to matter. The theory unifies matter and gravity in an action principle such that all the classical solutions of Einstein's theory coupled to matter are also solutions of the nonlocal theory. At the quantum level, we show that the theory is power-counting super-renormalizable in even dimensions and finite in odd dimensions. A simple extension of the model compatible with the above properties is finite also in even dimensions.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Quantum avoidance of Gödel's closed timelike curves

In a large class of nonlocal as well as local higher derivative theories minimally coupled to the matter sector, we investigate the exactness of two different classes of homogeneous Gödel-type solutions, which may or may not allow closed time-like curves (CTC). Our analysis is limited to spacetimes solving the Einstein's EoM, thus we can not exclude the presence of other Gödel-type solutions solving the EoM of local and nonlocal higher derivative theories but not the Einstein's EoM.It turns out that the homogeneous Gödel spacetimes without CTC are basically exact solutions for all theories, while the metrics with CTC are not exact solutions of (super-)renormalizable local or nonlocal gravitational theories. Hence, the quantum renormalizability property excludes theories suffering of the Gödel's causality violation. We also comment about nonlocal gravity non-minimally coupled to matter. In this class of theories, all the Gödel's spacetimes, with or without CTC, are exact solutions at classical level. However, the quantum corrections, although perturbative, very likely spoil the exactness of such solutions. Therefore, we can state that the Gödel's Universes with CTC and the super-renormalizability are mutually exclusive.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

On the analytic extension of regular rotating black holes

We hereby focus on the analytic geodesic extension of several regular rotating black holes (RRBHs) obtained throughout the Newman-Janis algorithm starting from some popular spherically symmetric regular black holes. It turns out that if the metric is not an even function of Boyer-Lindquist radial coordinate r, similarly to the Kerr spacetime, the metric has to be extended to negative values of r to ensure the analyticity of the geodesic equations (and in turn of the geodesics). Therefore, some of the extended RRBHs considered in this paper, such as the rotating Hayward black hole, are geodetically incomplete because they are singular somewhere for r < 0, and non-analytic at the ring located in $(r = 0, {θ= π/2})$. Conversely, other spacetimes, like nonlocal black holes, can be analytically extended to negative r. However, the real issue shows up at the ring, where, unfortunately, all the RRBHs studied in this paper fail to be regular. Indeed, at the ring, the Kretschmann invariant is finite but nonanalytic, while the higher derivative curvature invariants are divergent. In order to avoid such catastrophe, we propose a modification of the RRBHs in which the angular momentum is promoted to a function of the radial coordinate. According to our proposal, the angular momentum vanishes for $r\rightarrow 0$ and the ring shrinks to a point. Therefore, the regularity properties of the regular spherically symmetric black holes are recovered for $r\rightarrow 0$.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Geodesic incompleteness of some popular regular black holes

Throughout the study of the geodesics of some popular spherically symmetric regular black holes, we hereby prove that the analytically extended Hayward black hole is geodetically incomplete. The simplest extension of the Culetu-Simpson-Visser's non-analytic smooth black hole is also geodetically incomplete, with the exception of the antipodal continuation of the radial geodesics. However, the huge ambiguity in the extension of non analytic spacetimes is tantamount of geodesic incompleteness and such spacetimes do not solve the singularity issue unless at least all the extensions turn out to be complete. Hence, we provide several mere modifications of such spacetimes in order to make them geodetically complete in all possible extensions beyond r=0.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2023

Quantum field theory with ghost pairs

We explicitly show that general local higher-derivative theories with only complex conjugate ghosts and normal real particles are unitary at any perturbative order in the loop expansion. The proof presented here relies on integrating the loop energies on complex paths resulting from the deformation of the purely imaginary paths, when the external energies are continued from imaginary to real values. Contrary to the case of nonlocal theories, where the same integration path was first proposed, for the classes of theories studied here the same procedure is not analytic, but the resulting theory is unitary and unique when the complex ghosts are present in pairs. As an explicit application, a special class of higher-derivative super-renormalizable or finite gravitational and gauge theories turns out to be unitary at any perturbative order if we exclude the complex ghosts from the spectrum of the theory, as it is normally accepted for Becchi-Rouet-Stora-Tyutin (BRST) ghosts. Finally, we propose an analogy between confined gluons in quantum Yang-Mills theory and classical complex pairs in local higher-derivative theories. According to such interpretation, complex ghosts will not appear on shell as asymptotic states because confined in what is natural to name "ghostballs."

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Semiclassical spacetimes at super-Planckian scales from delocalized sources

We derive the gravitational field and the spacetime metric generated by sources in quantum superposition of different locations. We start by working in a Newtonian approximation, in which the effective gravitational potential is computed as the expectation value of the gravitational potential operator in a Gaussian distribution of width $R$ for the position of the source. The effective gravitational potential is then covariantly uplifted to a fully relativistic metric in general relativity, describing the spacetime generated by averaging over the state of such sources. These results are then rederived and extended by adopting an independent construction in terms of quantum reference frames. We find three classes of quantum effective metrics which are all asymptotically flat and reproduce the Schwarzschild metric at great distances. The solutions differ, however, in the inner core. The quantum uncertainty $Δr\sim R$ in the position of the source prevents the radius of the transverse two-sphere to shrink to zero. Depending on the strength of the quantum superposition effects, we have either a nonsingular black hole with a ``quantum hair'' and an event horizon, a one-way wormhole with a critical null throat or a traversable wormhole. We also provide a detailed study of the geometric and thermodynamic properties of the spacetime structure for each of these three families of models, as well as their phenomenology.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Stringballs and Planckballs for Dark Matter

As a follow up of the seminal work by Guiot, Borquez, Deur, and Werner on "Graviballs and Dark Matter", we explicitly show that contrary to Einstein's gravity, in string theory, local and nonlocal higher derivative theories, as well as general asymptotically-free or finite theories, gravitationally interacting bound states can form when the energy is larger than the Planck energy. On the other hand, in higher derivative or nonlocal theories with interaction governed by a dimensionless or a dimensionful coupling constant, the bound states form when the energy is smaller than the Planck energy. Such bound states are allowed because of the softness of the scattering amplitudes in the ultraviolet region. Indeed, in such theories, the potential is finite while the force is zero or constant in $r=0$. Finally, since the bound states that form in the early Universe may have an energy that ranges from the Planck mass to any arbitrarily large or small value, we argue that they can serve as dark matter candidates and/or as the seeds for the structure's formation at large scale in the Cosmos.

hep-th↗

arXiv2022

Universal leading quantum correction to the Newton potential

The derivation of effective quantum gravity corrections to Newton's potential is an important step in the whole effective quantum field theory approach. We hereby add new strong arguments in favor of omitting all the diagrams with internal lines of the massive sources, and we also recalculate the corrections to the Newtonian potential using functional methods in an arbitrary parametrization of the quantum fluctuations of the metric. The general proof of the gauge- and parametrization-independence within this approach is also explicitly given. On top of that, we argue that the universality of the result holds regardless of the details of the ultraviolet completion of quantum gravity theory. Indeed, it turns out that the logarithm quantum correction depends only on the low energy spectrum of the theory that is responsible for the analytic properties of loop's amplitudes.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Geometric origin of the galaxies' dark side

We show that Einstein's conformal gravity is able to explain simply on the geometric ground the galactic rotation curves without need to introduce any modification in both the gravitational as well as in the matter sector of the theory. The geometry of each galaxy is described by a metric obtained making a singular rescaling of the Schwarzschild's spacetime. The new exact solution, which is asymptotically Anti-de Sitter, manifests an unattainable singularity at infinity that can not be reached in finite proper time, namely, the spacetime is geodetically complete. It deserves to be notice that we here think different from the usual. Indeed, instead of making the metric singularity-free, we make it apparently but harmlessly even more singular then the Schwarzschild's one. Finally, it is crucial to point that the Weyl's conformal symmetry is spontaneously broken to the new singular vacuum rather then the asymptotically flat Schwarzschild's one. The metric, is unique according to: the null energy condition, the zero acceleration for photons in the Newtonian regime, and the homogeneity of the Universe at large scales. Once the matter is conformally coupled to gravity, the orbital velocity for a probe star in the galaxy turns out to be asymptotically constant consistently with the observations and the Tully-Fisher relation. Therefore, we compare our model with a sample of 175 galaxies and we show that our velocity profile very well interpolates the galactic rotation-curves for a proper choice of the only free parameter in the metric and the the mass to luminosity ratios, which turn out to be close to 1 consistently with the absence of dark matter.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Tree-level scattering amplitudes in nonlocal field theories

We prove in two ways that, for a special class of nonlocal field theories consistent with linear and non-linear stability at the classical level, and with unitarity and super-renormalizability or finiteness at the quantum level, the $n$-point tree-level scattering amplitudes are the same as those of the underlying local theory. In particular, the $n$-point amplitudes of nonlocal gravity, with or without coupling to matter, are the same as for Einstein's general relativity.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Renormalization Group in Six-derivative Quantum Gravity

The exact one-loop beta functions for the four-derivative terms (Weyl tensor squared, Ricci scalar squared and the Gauss-Bonnet) are derived for the minimal six-derivative quantum gravity (QG) theory in four spacetime dimensions. The calculation is performed by means of the Barvinsky and Vilkovisky generalized Schwinger-DeWitt technique. With this result we gain, for the first time, the full set of the relevant beta functions in a super-renormalizable model of QG. The complete set of renormalization group (RG) equations, including also those for the Newton and the cosmological constant, is solved explicitly in the general case and for the six-derivative Lee-Wick (LW) quantum gravity proposed in a previous paper by two of the authors. In the ultraviolet regime, the minimal theory is shown to be asymptotically free and describes free gravitons in Minkowski or (anti-) de Sitter ((A)dS) backgrounds, depending on the initial conditions for the RG equations. The ghostlike states appear in complex conjugate pairs at any energy scale consistently with the LW prescription. However, owing to the running, these ghosts may become tachyons. We argue that an extension of the theory that involves operators cubic in Riemann tensor may change the beta functions and hence be capable of overcoming this problem.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Action principle selection of regular black holes

We elaborate on the role of higher-derivative curvature invariants as a quantum selection mechanism of regular spacetimes in the framework of the Lorentzian path integral approach to quantum gravity. We show that for a large class of black hole metrics prominently regular there are higher-derivative curvature invariants which are singular. If such terms are included in the action, according to the finite action principle applied to a higher-derivative gravity model, not only singular spacetimes but also some of the regular ones do not seem to contribute to the path integral.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Higher-order regularity in local and nonlocal quantum gravity

In the present work we investigate the Newtonian limit of higher-derivative gravity theories with more than four derivatives in the action, including the non-analytic logarithmic terms resulting from one-loop quantum corrections. The first part of the paper deals with the occurrence of curvature singularities of the metric in the classical models. It is shown that in the case of local theories, even though the curvature scalars of the metric are regular, invariants involving derivatives of curvatures can still diverge. Indeed, we prove that if the action contains $2n+6$ derivatives of the metric in both the scalar and the spin-2 sectors, then all the curvature-derivative invariants with at most $2n$ covariant derivatives of the curvatures are regular, while there exist scalars with $2n+2$ derivatives that are singular. The regularity of all these invariants can be achieved in some classes of nonlocal gravity theories. In the second part of the paper, we show that the leading logarithmic quantum corrections do not change the regularity of the Newtonian limit. Finally, we also consider the infrared limit of these solutions and verify the universality of the leading quantum correction to the potential in all the theories investigated in the paper.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

The Higgs mechanism in nonlocal field theory

We provide an example of nonlocal scalar electrodynamics that allows the same Higgs mechanism so successful in local field theory. The nonlocal action is structured in order to have the same exact solutions and the same equations of motion for perturbations of the local theory, at any perturbative order. Therefore, the perturbative degrees of freedom that propagate in the unstable vacuum are reshuffled when the stable vacuum is replaced in the EoM, but their number does not change at any perturbative order, and their properties are the same like in the usual local theory. Finally, the theory is super-renormalizable or finite at quantum level.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Nonlocal Spacetime-Matter

We propose a nonlocal field theory for gravity in presence of matter consistent with perturbative unitarity, quantum finiteness, and other essential classical properties that we are going to list below. First, the theory exactly reproduces the same tree-level scattering amplitudes of Einstein's gravity coupled to matter insuring no violation of macro-causality. Second, all the exact solutions of the Einstein's theory are also exact solutions of the nonlocal theory. Finally, and most importantly, the linear and nonlinear stability analysis of the exact solutions in nonlocal gravity (with or without matter) is in one to one correspondence with the same analysis in General Relativity. Therefore, all the exact solutions stable in the Einstein's theory are also stable in nonlocal gravity in presence of matter at any perturbative order.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Non-unitarity of Minkowskian non-local quantum field theories

We show that Minkowskian non-local quantum field theories are not unitary. We consider a simple one loop diagram for a scalar non-local field and show that the imaginary part of the corresponding complex amplitude is not given by Cutkosky rules, indeed this diagram violates the unitarity condition. We compare this result with the case of an Euclidean non-local scalar field, that has been shown to satisfy the Cutkosky rules, and we clearly identify the reason of the breaking of unitarity of the Minkowskian theory.

hep-th↗