SearcharxivSearch

arXiv subjects

Matteo Magi

Publications and source records attributed to Matteo Magi.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

Black holes with torsion hair in cubic Holst-type Poincar\'e gauge gravity: from singular to regular geometries

Motivated by the singularity theorems of Poincar\'e Gauge (PG) theory, we investigate extensions of the Holst quadratic model by introducing cubic order invariants constructed from the curvature and torsion tensors into the gravitational action. Such models are characterised by a kinetic structure that is governed by a pseudoscalar mode, whereas the remaining irreducible modes of torsion contribute through nonlinear interactions that can have important implications for the space-time geometry. In particular, in line with other well-known models of PG theory, the Birkhoff theorem does not hold in general, allowing for new exact static and spherically symmetric black hole solutions with dynamical torsion. Across the different torsion sectors, corresponding to the irreducible modes and parity components of the torsion field involved in the analysis, we find both singular and regular configurations. Among the singular solutions, we obtain Kiselev-like and Boulware-Deser-like geometries, as well as new geometries with distinct algebraic and Lambert $W$ metric corrections. In addition, we find regular black holes with both primary and secondary torsion hair, which evade the singularity theorems through violations of the causal convergence conditions induced by the nonlinear torsion interactions. Therefore, we show that Holst-type PG models can support a rich variety of black hole geometries, while providing explicit mechanisms for evading the singularity theorems of PG theory.

gr-qc

Exact Equivalence of the Observed Redshift and the Pulsar Timing Modulation in the Infinitesimal-Pulse Limit

The pulsar timing arrays (PTA) collect the times of arrival of radio signals from the millisecond pulsars, and gravitational waves can modulate their arrival times. Although the PTA observable involves successive radio pulses propagating along different light paths, its standard theoretical description at linear order in perturbations is equivalent to the Sachs-Wolfe formula for the observed redshift, which describes the fractional change in photon frequency along a single geodesic. While this equivalence is well known at linear order, its validity beyond first order has not been systematically addressed in the PTA literature. Here we show that, in the limit of vanishing proper-time separation between successive emission events, the timing modulation is exactly equal to the observed redshift, without expanding the spacetime geometry. For a finite emission interval, we derive the exact relation between the timing modulation and the observed redshift, and show that their difference is controlled by the ratio between the emission interval and the characteristic timescale over which the observed redshift varies.

astro-ph.CO

Perturbative and numerical study of nonlinear relativistic effects in weak lensing

The standard weak lensing formalism assumes that the lensing map relating the observed image of a source to its intrinsic shape depends only on the deflection angle. We show that this description is incomplete beyond linear perturbation theory, even when only scalar perturbations are present at first order. Using the Jacobi map formalism, we derive expressions for the rotation field, shear B-modes, and their angular power spectra at second order in relativistic perturbation theory. In the standard formalism, rotation and shear B-modes share the same spectrum, however, this degeneracy is broken once the parallel transport of the Sachs basis is consistently taken into account. We quantify this correction numerically, finding a difference of about $5\%$ on large angular scales $\ell \sim 5$ for sources at redshift $z_\mathrm{s} = 0.5$. We also investigate frame-dragging effects, which are usually neglected in weak lensing. We present the first analytical derivation of the corresponding impact on the angular power spectrum of shear B-modes and show that it becomes the dominant contribution on scales $\ell \lesssim 10$. While both Sachs-basis rotation and frame dragging significantly affect shear B-modes on large scales, their contribution to the observed ellipticity B-mode angular power spectrum is at the percent level relative to the total ellipticity B-mode signal, making these nonlinear relativistic corrections challenging to detect in practice. Our results are supported by relativistic simulations of weak lensing observables, including the first numerical study of frame dragging in the power spectra of the lensing convergence and cosmic shear.

astro-ph.CO

Cosmic Dipoles from Large-Scale Structure Surveys

Large-scale structure surveys can be used to measure the dipole in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), in the luminosity distances inferred from type-Ia supernova observations, and in the spatial distribution of galaxies and quasars. The measurements of these cosmic dipoles appear to be mutually inconsistent, even though they are expected to indicate the common observer velocity. This observational tension may represent a significant challenge to the standard model of cosmology. Here we study in detail what contributes to the cosmic dipoles from CMB, supernova, and galaxy survey in the standard $\Lambda$CDM model, though our theoretical model can be applied beyond the standard model. While measurements of the cosmic dipoles yield the relative velocities between the source samples and the observer velocity, the motion of the observer is the dominant contribution in the conformal Newtonian gauge, and the intrinsic velocities of the samples fall steeply with increasing redshift of the sources. Hence the cosmic dipoles of CMB, type-Ia supernovae, and galaxies should be aligned but can have different amplitudes. We also clarify several misconceptions that are commonly found in the literature.

astro-ph.CO

Infrared Sensitivity of Cosmological Probes In The Presence of Axion Field Fluctuations

We study the effects of long wavelength entropy fluctuations on cosmological probes such as galaxy clustering, luminosity distance, and CMB temperature anisotropies. Specifically, we consider fluctuations of a massless spectator scalar field set up in the early universe, which later acquires mass during the radiation-dominated era. We find that there are non-vanishing effects on observables, and the amplitude of these effects peaks for observables set up at the time of equal matter and radiation, and decreases as $\eta^{-2}$ where $\eta$ is the conformal time. Hence, the back-reaction effects are important for CMB anisotropies, but their impact on late-time observables is suppressed. In particular, the back-reaction effects are unable to explain the Hubble tension while they might alleviate the cosmic dipole tension. In contrast to a lot of the previous work on back-reaction, we work in position rather than momentum space.

astro-ph.CO

Infrared Sensitivity of Cosmological Probes in Horndeski Theory

Cosmological probes constructed in large-scale surveys are independent of the underlying theory of gravity, and their relativistic descriptions are indeed applicable to any theory of gravity. It was shown that the presence of fluctuations with wavelength much larger than the characteristic scales of the surveys has no impact on cosmological probes, if the matter content is adiabatic and the Einstein equations are used. In this paper we study the sensitivity of cosmological probes to infrared fluctuations in Horndeski theory. We find that the extra degree of freedom in the Horndeski scalar field can induce sensitivity to infrared fluctuations in the cosmological probes, even when the matter components are adiabatic on large scales. A generalized adiabatic condition including the extra dof, in contrast, guarantees that cosmological probes are devoid of infrared sensitivity, and this solution corresponds to the adiabatic modes \`a la Weinberg in Horndeski theory, which can be removed by a coordinate transformation in the infrared limit. We discuss the implications of our findings and the connections to the initial conditions.

astro-ph.CO

Conditions for the Absence of Infrared Sensitivity in Cosmological Probes in Any Gravity Theories

Large-scale surveys allow us to construct cosmological probes such as galaxy clustering, weak gravitational lensing, the luminosity distance, and cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The gauge-invariant descriptions of these cosmological probes reveal the presence of numerous relativistic effects in the cosmological probes, and they are sensitive (or even divergent) to the long wave-length fluctuations in the initial conditions. In the standard $\Lambda$CDM model, this infrared sensitivity is absent due to subtle cancellations among the relativistic contributions, once the Einstein equation is used. Here we derive the most general conditions for the absence of infrared sensitivity in the cosmological probes without committing to general relativity. We discuss the implications of our results for gravity theories beyond general relativity.

astro-ph.CO

Infrared (in)sensitivity of relativistic effects in cosmological observable statistics

The relativistic effects in cosmological observables contain critical information about the initial conditions and gravity on large scales. Compared to the matter density fluctuation, some of these relativistic contributions scale with negative powers of comoving wave number, implying a growing sensitivity to infrared modes. However, this can be inconsistent with the equivalence principle and can also lead to infrared divergences in the observable $N$-point statistics. Recent perturbative calculations have shown that this infrared sensitivity is indeed spurious due to subtle cancellations in the cosmological observables that have been missed in the bulk of the literature. Here we demonstrate that the cosmological observable statistics are infrared-insensitive in a general and fully non-linear way, assuming diffeomorphism invariance and adiabatic fluctuations on large scales.

gr-qc

Second-order gauge-invariant formalism for the cosmological observables: Complete verification of their gauge-invariance

Accounting for all the relativistic effects, we have developed the fully nonlinear gauge-invariant formalism for describing the cosmological observables and presented the second-order perturbative expressions associated with light propagation and observations without choosing a gauge condition. For the first time, we have performed a complete verification of the validity of our second-order expressions by comparing their gauge-transformation properties from two independent methods: one directly obtained from their expressions in terms of metric perturbations and the other expected from their nonlinear relations. The expressions for the cosmological observables such as galaxy clustering and the luminosity distance are invariant under diffeomorphism and gauge-invariant at the observed position. We compare our results to the previous work and discuss the differences in the perturbative expressions. Our second-order gauge-invariant formalism constitutes a major step forward in the era of precision cosmology and its applications in the future will play a crucial role for going beyond the power spectrum and probing the early universe.

astro-ph.CO