arXiv subjects

Matt Visser

Publications and source records attributed to Matt Visser.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

The utterly prosaic connection between physics and mathematics

Eugene Wigner famously argued for the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics" for describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960 essay. That essay has now led to some 55 years of (sometimes anguished) soul searching --- responses range from "So what? Why do you think we developed mathematics in the first place?", through to extremely speculative ruminations on the existence of the universe (multiverse) as a purely mathematical entity --- the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. In the current essay I will steer an utterly prosaic middle course: Much of the mathematics we develop is informed by physics questions we are tying to solve; and those physics questions for which the most utilitarian mathematics has successfully been developed are typically those where the best physics progress has been made.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2017

How to Wick rotate generic curved spacetime

It is an article of folklore that the collection of ideas identified as Euclidean quantum gravity may be derived from ordinary Lorentzian signature gravity by the procedure of Wick rotation. This note will attempt to shed some light on this relatively ill-understood procedure. I argue that it proves inappropriate and unhelpful to regard Wick rotation in terms of a complex deformation of the time coordinate. Rather, Wick rotation can more usefully be viewed as a complex deformation of the spacetime metric. This simple reformulation of the Wick rotation procedure, while it leaves flat space physics unaffected, has profound implications for quantum gravity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

Cartesian Kerr-Schild variation on the Newman-Janis ansatz

The Newman-Janis trick is a procedure, (not even really an ansatz), for obtaining the Kerr spacetime from the Schwarzschild spacetime. This 50 year old trick continues to generate heated discussion and debate even to this day. Most of the debate focusses on whether the Newman-Janis procedure can be upgraded to the status of an algorithm, or even an inspired ansatz, or is it just a random trick of no deep physical significance. (That the Newman-Janis procedure very quickly led to the discovery of the Kerr-Newman spacetime is a point very much in its favour.) In the current article we will not answer these deeper questions, we shall instead present a much simpler alternative variation on the theme of the Newman--Janis trick that might be easier to work with. We shall present a 2-step version of the Newman-Janis trick that works directly with the Kerr-Schild "Cartesian" metric presentation of the Kerr spacetime. That is, we show how the original 4-step Newman-Janis procedure can, (using the interplay between oblate spheroidal and Cartesian coordinates), be reduced to a considerably cleaner 2-step process.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

Primes and the Lambert W function

The Lambert W function, implicitly defined by W(x) exp{W(x)}=x, is a "new" special function that has recently been the subject of an extended upsurge in interest and applications. In this note, I point out that the Lambert W function can also be used to gain a new perspective on the distribution of primes.

math.NT↗

arXiv2016

"Twisted" black holes are unphysical

So-called "twisted" black holes have recently been proposed by Zhang (1609.09721 [gr-qc]), and further considered by Chen and Jing (1610.00886 [gr-qc]), and more recently by Ong (1610.05757 [gr-qc]). While these spacetimes are certainly Ricci-flat, and so mathematically satisfy the vacuum Einstein equations, they are also merely minor variants on Taub--NUT spacetimes. Consequently they exhibit several unphysical features that make them quite unreasonable as realistic astrophysical objects. Specifically, these "twisted" black holes are not (globally) asymptotically flat. Furthermore, they contain closed timelike curves that are not hidden behind any event horizon --- the most obvious of these closed timelike curves are small azimuthal circles around the rotation axis, but the effect is more general. The entire region outside the horizon is infested with closed timelike curves.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Global properties of physically interesting Lorentzian spacetimes

Under normal circumstances most members of the general relativity community focus almost exclusively on the local properties of spacetime, such as the locally Euclidean structure of the manifold and the Lorentzian signature of the metric tensor. When combined with the classical Einstein field equations this gives an extremely successful empirical model of classical gravity and classical matter --- at least as long as one does not ask too many awkward questions about global issues, (such as global topology and global causal structure). We feel however that this is a tactical error --- even without invoking full-fledged "quantum gravity" we know that the standard model of particle physics is also an extremely good representation of some parts of empirical reality; and we had better be able to carry over all the good features of the standard model of particle physics --- at least into the realm of semi-classical quantum gravity. Doing so gives us some interesting global features that spacetime should possess: On physical grounds spacetime should be space-orientable, time-orientable, and spacetime-orientable, and it should possess a globally defined tetrad (vierbein, or in general a globally defined vielbein/n-bein). So on physical grounds spacetime should be parallelizable. This strongly suggests that the metric is not the fundamental physical quantity; a very good case can be made for the tetrad being more fundamental than the metric. Furthermore, a globally-defined "almost complex structure" is almost unavoidable. Ideas along these lines have previously been mooted, but much is buried in the pre-arXiv literature and is either forgotten or inaccessible. We shall revisit these ideas taking a perspective very much based on empirical physical observation.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2016

Buchert coarse-graining and the classical energy conditions

So-called "Buchert averaging" is actually a coarse-graining procedure, where fine detail is "smeared out" due to limited spatio-temporal resolution. For technical reasons, (to be explained herein), "averaging" is not really an appropriate term, and I shall consistently describe the process as a "coarse-graining". Because Einstein gravity is nonlinear the coarse-grained Einstein tensor is typically not equal to the Einstein tensor of the coarse-grained spacetime geometry. The discrepancy can be viewed as an "effective" stress-energy. To keep otherwise messy technical issues firmly under control, I shall work with conformal-FLRW (CFLRW) cosmologies. These CFLRW-based models are particularly tractable, and are also particularly attractive observationally: the CMB is not distorted. In this CFLRW context one can prove some rigorous theorems regarding the interplay between Buchert coarse-graining, tracelessness of the effective stress-energy, and the classical energy conditions.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

A novel approach to thin-shell wormholes and applications

A novel framework is presented that can be adapted to a wide class of generic spherically symmetric thin-shell wormholes. By using the Darmois--Israel formalism, we analyze the stability of arbitrary spherically symmetric thin-shell wormholes to linearized perturbations around static solutions. We demonstrate in full generality that the stability of the wormhole is equivalent to choosing suitable properties for the exotic material residing on the wormhole throat. As an application, we consider the thin-shell variant of the Ellis wormhole for the cases of a vanishing momentum flux and non-zero external fluxes.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Novel stability approach of thin-shell gravastars

We develop an extremely general and robust framework that can be adapted to wide classes of generic spherically symmetric thin-shell gravastars. The thin shell (transition layer) will be permitted to move freely in the bulk spacetimes, permitting a fully dynamic analysis. This will then allow us to perform a general stability analysis, where it is explicitly shown that stability of the gravastar is related to the properties of the matter residing in the thin-shell transition layer.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Sparsity of the Hawking flux

It is (or should be) well-known that the Hawking flux that reaches spatial infinity is extremely sparse, and extremely thin, with the Hawking quanta, one-by-one, slowly dribbling out of the black hole. The typical time between quanta reaching infinity is much larger than the timescale set by the energy of the quanta. Among other things, this means that the Hawking evaporation of a black hole should be viewed as a sequential cascade of 2-body decays.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Greybody factors for Schwarzschild black holes: Path-ordered exponentials and product integrals

In recent work concerning the sparsity of the Hawking flux [arXiv:1506.03975v2], we found it necessary to re-examine what is known regarding the greybody factors of black holes, with a view to extending and expanding on some old results from the 1970s. Focussing specifically on Schwarzschild black holes, we re-calculated and re-assessed the greybody factors using a path-ordered-exponential approach, a technique which has the virtue of providing a semi-explicit formula for the relevant Bogoliubov coefficients. These path-ordered-exponentials, (being based on a "transfer matrix" formalism), are closely related to so-called "product integrals", leading to quite straightforward and direct numerical evaluation, while avoiding any need for numerically solving differential equations. Furthermore, while considerable analytic information is already available regarding both the high-frequency and low-frequency asymptotics of these greybody factors, numerical approaches seem better adapted to finding suitable "global models" for these greybody factors in the intermediate frequency regime, where most of the Hawking flux is concentrated. Working in a more general context, these path-ordered-exponential techniques are also likely to be of interest for generic barrier-penetration problems.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

On burning a lump of coal

Burning something, (e.g. the proverbial lump of coal, or an encyclopaedia for that matter), in a blackbody furnace leads to an approximately Planck emission spectrum with an average entropy/information transfer of approximately $3.9 \pm 2.5$ bits per emitted photon. This quantitative and qualitative result depends only on the underlying unitarity of the quantum physics of burning, combined with the statistical mechanics of blackbody radiation. The fact that the utterly standard and unitarity preserving process of burning something (in fact, burning anything) nevertheless *has* an associated entropy/information budget, and the quantitative *size* of that entropy/information budget, is a severely under-appreciated feature of standard quantum statistical physics.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

The Hawking cascade from a black hole is extremely sparse

The Hawking flux from a black hole, (at least as seen from asymptotic infinity), is extremely sparse and thin, with the average time between emission of the successive Hawking quanta being many times larger than the natural timescale set by the energies of the emitted quanta. While this result has been known for over 30 years, it has largely been forgotten. We shall focus on the early-stage low-temperature regime, and shall confront numerical estimates with semi-analytic approximations based on a naive Planck spectrum. First we shall identify several natural dimensionless figures of merit, and thereby compare the mean time between emission of successive Hawking quanta to several distinct but quite natural timescales that can be associated with the emitted quanta, demonstrating that very large ratios are typical for emission of massless quanta from a Schwarzschild black hole. Furthermore these ratios are independent of the mass of the black hole as it slowly evolves. We shall then show that the situation for the more general Reissner-Nordstrom and generic "dirty'' black holes is even worse, at least as long as the surrounding matter satisfies some suitable energy conditions. The situation for the Kerr and Kerr--Newman black holes (or even for charged particle emission from a Reissner--Nordstrom black hole) is considerably trickier, and depends on a careful accounting of the super-radiant modes. Overall, the Hawking quanta are seen to be dribbling out of the black hole one at a time, in an extremely slow cascade of 2-body decays. Among other things, this implies that the Hawking flux is subject to "shot noise''. Observationally, the Planck spectrum of the Hawking flux can only be determined by collecting and integrating data over a very long timescale. We conclude by connecting these points back to various kinematic aspects of the Hawking evaporation process.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Semi-classical and nonlinear energy conditions

We consider the characteristics of nonlinear energy conditions and of quantum extensions of these and the usual energy conditions. We show that they are satisfied by some quantum vacuum states that violate the usual energy conditions.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Modelling anisotropic fluid spheres in general relativity

We argue that an arbitrary general relativistic static anisotropic fluid sphere, (static and spherically symmetric but with transverse pressure not equal to radial pressure), can nevertheless be successfully mimicked by suitable linear combinations of theoretically attractive and quite simple classical matter: a classical (charged) isotropic perfect fluid, a classical electromagnetic field, and a classical (minimally coupled) scalar field. While the most general decomposition is not unique, a preferred minimal decomposition can be constructed that is unique. We show how the classical energy conditions for the anisotropic fluid sphere can be related to energy conditions for the isotropic perfect fluid, electromagnetic field, and scalar field components of the model. Furthermore we show how this decomposition relates to the distribution of both electric charge density and scalar charge density throughout the model. The generalized TOV equation implies that the perfect fluid component in this model is automatically in internal equilibrium, with pressure forces, electric forces, and scalar forces balancing the gravitational pseudo-force. Consequently, we can build theoretically attractive matter models that can be used to mimic almost any static spherically symmetric spacetime.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Explicit Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formulae for some specific Lie algebras

In a previous article, [arXiv:1501.02506, JPhysA {\bf48} (2015) 225207], we demonstrated that whenever $[X,Y] = u X + vY + cI$ the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula reduces to the tractable closed-form expression \[ Z(X,Y)=\ln( e^X e^Y ) = X+Y+ f(u,v) \; [X,Y], \] where $f(u,v)=f(v,u)$ is explicitly given by \[ f(u,v) = {(u-v)e^{u+v}-(ue^u-ve^v)\over u v (e^u - e^v)} = {(u-v)-(ue^{-v}-ve^{-u})\over u v (e^{-v} - e^{-u})}. \] This is much more general than the results usually presented for either the Heisenberg commutator $[P,Q]=-i\hbar I$, or the creation-destruction commutator $[a,a^\dagger]=I$. In the current article we shall further generalize and extend this result, primarily by relaxing the input assumptions. We shall work with the structure constants $f_{ab}{}^c$ of the Lie algebra, (defined by $[T_a,T_b] = f_{ab}{}^c \; T_c$), and identify suitable constraints one can place on the structure constants to make the Baker--Campbell--Hausdorff formula tractable. We shall also develop related results using the commutator sub-algebra $[\mathfrak{g},\mathfrak{g}]$ of the relevant Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$. Under suitable conditions, and taking $L_A B = [A,B]$ as usual, we shall demonstrate that \[ \ln( e^X e^Y ) = X + Y + {I \over e^{-L_X} - e^{+L_Y} } \left( {I-e^{-L_X}\over L_X} + {I-e^{+L_Y}\over L_Y} \right) [X,Y]. \]

math-ph↗

arXiv2015

Thermality of the Hawking flux

Is the Hawking flux "thermal"? Unfortunately, the answer to this seemingly innocent question depends on a number of often unstated, but quite crucial, technical assumptions built into modern (mis-)interpretations of the word "thermal". The original 1850's notions of thermality --- based on classical thermodynamic reasoning applied to idealized "black bodies" or "lamp black surfaces" --- when supplemented by specific basic quantum ideas from the early 1900's, immediately led to the notion of the black-body spectrum, (the Planck-shaped spectrum), but "without" any specific assumptions or conclusions regarding correlations between the quanta. Many (not all) modern authors (often implicitly and unintentionally) add an extra, and quite unnecessary, assumption that there are no correlations in the black-body radiation; but such usage is profoundly ahistorical and dangerously misleading. Specifically, the Hawking flux from an evaporating black hole, (just like the radiation flux from a leaky furnace or a burning lump of coal), is only "approximately" Planck-shaped over a bounded frequency range. Standard physics (phase space and adiabaticity effects) explicitly bound the frequency range over which the Hawking flux is "approximately" Planck-shaped from both above and below --- the Hawking flux is certainly not exactly Planckian, and there is no compelling physics reason to assume the Hawking photons are uncorrelated.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Conformally Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker cosmologies

In a universe where, according to the standard cosmological models, some 97% of the total mass-energy is still "missing in action" it behooves us to spend at least a little effort critically assessing and exploring radical alternatives. Among possible, (dare we say plausible), nonstandard but superficially viable models, those spacetimes conformal to the standard Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker class of cosmological models play a very special role --- these models have the unique and important property of permitting large non-perturbative geometric deviations from Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker cosmology without unacceptably distorting the cosmic microwave background. Performing a "cosmographic" analysis, (that is, temporarily setting aside the Einstein equations, since the question of whether or not the Einstein equations are valid on galactic and cosmological scales is essentially the same question as whether or not dark matter/dark energy actually exist), and using both supernova data and information about galactic structure, one can nevertheless place some quite significant observational constraints on any possible conformal mode --- however there is still an extremely rich range of phenomenological possibilities for both cosmologists and astrophysicists to explore.

gr-qc↗