arXiv subjects

Nicolas Yunes

Publications and source records attributed to Nicolas Yunes.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

The Effect of Cosmological Evolution on Solar System Constraints and on the Scalarization of Neutron Stars in Massless Scalar-Tensor Theories

Certain scalar-tensor theories of gravity that generalize Jordan-Fierz-Brans-Dicke theory are known to predict non-trivial phenomenology for neutron stars. In these theories, first proposed by Damour and Esposito-Farèse, the scalar field has a standard kinetic term, and couples conformally to the matter fields. The weak equivalence principle is therefore satisfied, but scalar effects may arise in strong-field regimes, e.g. allowing for violations of the strong equivalence principle in neutron stars ("spontaneous scalarization") or in sufficiently tight binary neutron-star systems ("dynamical/induced scalarization"). The original scalar-tensor theory proposed by Damour and Esposito-Farèse is in tension with solar-system constraints (for couplings that lead to scalarization), if one accounts for cosmological evolution of the scalar field and no mass term is included in the action. We here extend the conformal coupling of that theory, in order to ascertain if, in this way, solar-system tests can be passed, while retaining a non-trivial phenomenology for neutron stars. We find that even with this generalized conformal coupling, it is impossible to construct a theory that passes both Big-Bang nucleosynthesis and solar-system constraints, while simultaneously allowing for scalarization in isolated/binary neutron stars.

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arXiv2016

Musings on Lorentz Violation Given the Recent Gravitational-Wave Observations of Coalescing Binary Black Holes

The recent observation of gravitational waves by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration provides a unique opportunity to probe the extreme gravity of coalescing binary black holes. In this regime, the gravitational interaction is not only strong, but the spacetime curvature is large, characteristic velocities are a non-negligible fraction of the speed of light, and the time scale on which the curvature and gravity change is small. This contribution discusses some consequences of these observations on modifications to General Relativity, with a special emphasis on Lorentz-violating theories.

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arXiv2016

Binary Love Relations

When in a tight binary, the mutual tidal deformations of neutron stars imprint onto observables, encoding information about their internal structure at supranuclear densities and gravity in the extreme-gravity regime. Gravitational wave observations of their late binary inspiral may serve as a tool to extract the individual tidal deformabilities, but this is made difficult by degeneracies between them in the gravitational wave model. We here resolve this problem by discovering approximately universal relations between dimensionless combinations of the individual tidal deformabilities. We show that these relations break degeneracies in the gravitational wave model, allowing for the accurate extraction of both deformabilities. Such measurements can be used to better differentiate between equation-of-state models, and improve tests of General Relativity and cosmology.

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arXiv2016

I-Love-Q Relations: From Compact Stars to Black Holes

The relations between most observables associated with a compact star, such as the mass and radius of a neutron star or a quark star, typically depend strongly on their unknown internal structure. The I-Love-Q relations (between the moment of inertia, the tidal deformability and the quadrupole moment) are however approximately insensitive to this structure. These relations become exact for stationary black holes in General Relativity as shown by the no-hair theorems. In this paper, we take the first steps toward studying how the approximate I-Love-Q relations become exact in the limit as compact stars become black holes. To do so, we consider a toy model, i.e. incompressible stars with anisotropic pressure, which allows us to model an equilibrium sequence of stars with their compactness approaching the black hole limit arbitrarily closely. We extract the I-Love-Q trio by numerically constructing such a sequence in the slow-rotation and small-tide approximations. We find that the I-Love-Q relations approach the black hole limit in a nontrivial way, with the quadrupole moment and the tidal deformability changing sign as the compactness and the amount of anisotropy are increased. Generalizing Maclaurin spheroids to anisotropic stars, we show that the multipole moments also change sign in the Newtonian limit as the amount of anisotropy is increased. We also prove analytically that the stellar moment of inertia reaches the black hole limit as the compactness reaches the black hole value in the strongly anisotropic limit. Modeling the black hole limit through a sequence of anisotropic stars, however, fails when considering other theories of gravity. We calculate the scalar dipole charge and the moment of inertia in a parity-violating modified theory and find that these quantities do not tend to their black hole counterparts as the anisotropic stellar sequence approaches the black hole limit.

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arXiv2016

Theory-Agnostic Constraints on Black-Hole Dipole Radiation with Multi-Band Gravitational-Wave Astrophysics

The aLIGO detection of the black-hole binary GW150914 opened a new era for probing extreme gravity. Many gravity theories predict the emission of dipole gravitational radiation by binaries. This is excluded to high accuracy in binary pulsars, but entire classes of theories predict this effect predominantly (or only) in binaries involving black holes. Joint observations of GW150914-like systems by aLIGO and eLISA will improve bounds on dipole emission from black-hole binaries by six orders of magnitude relative to current constraints, provided that eLISA is not dramatically descoped.

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arXiv2016

Can the Slow-Rotation Approximation be used in Electromagnetic Observations of Black Holes?

Future electromagnetic observations of black holes may allow us to test General Relativity in the strong-field regime. Such tests, however, require knowledge of rotating black hole solutions in modified gravity theories, a class of which does not admit the Kerr metric as a solution. Several rotating black hole solutions in modified theories have only been found in the slow-rotation approximation (i.e. assuming the spin angular momentum is much smaller than the mass squared). We here investigate whether the systematic error due to the approximate nature of these black hole metrics is small enough relative to the observational error to allow their use in electromagnetic observations to constrain deviations from General Relativity. We address this by considering whether electromagnetic observables constructed from a slow-rotation approximation to the Kerr metric can fit observables constructed from the full Kerr metric with systematic errors smaller than current observational errors. We focus on black hole shadow and continuum spectrum observations, as these are the least influenced by accretion disk physics, with current observational errors of about 10%. We find that the fractional systematic error introduced by using a second-order, slowly-rotating Kerr metric is at most 2% for shadows created by black holes with dimensionless spins $χ\leq0.6$. We also find that the systematic error introduced by using the slowly-rotating Kerr metric as an exact metric when constructing continuum spectrum observables is negligible for black holes with dimensionless spins of $χ\lesssim 0.9$. Our results suggest that the modified gravity solutions found in the slow-rotation approximation may be used to constrain realistic deviations from General Relativity with continuum spectrum and black hole shadow observations.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2016

Isolated and Binary Neutron Stars in Dynamical Chern-Simons Gravity

We study isolated and binary neutron stars in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. This theory modifies the Einstein-Hilbert action through the introduction of a dynamical scalar field coupled to the Pontryagin density. We here treat this theory as an effective model, working to leading order in the Chern-Simons coupling. We first construct isolated neutron star solutions in the slow-rotation expansion to quadratic order in spin. We find that isolated neutron stars acquire a scalar dipole charge that corrects its spin angular momentum to linear order in spin and corrects its mass and quadrupole moment to quadratic order in spin, as measured by an observer at spatial infinity. We then consider neutron stars binaries that are widely separated and solve for their orbital evolution in this modified theory. We find that the evolution of post-Keplerian parameters is modified, with the rate of periastron advance being the dominant correction at first post-Newtonian order. We conclude by applying these results to observed pulsars with the aim to place constraints on dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. We find that the modifications to the observed mass are degenerate with the neutron star equation of state, which prevents us from testing the theory with the inferred mass of the millisecond pulsar J1614-2230. We also find that the corrections to the post-Keplerian parameters are too small to be observable today even with data from the double binary pulsar J0737-3039. Our results suggest that pulsar observations are not currently capable of constraining dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, and thus, gravitational-wave observations may be the only path to a stringent constraint of this theory in the imminent future.

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arXiv2015

Challenging the Presence of Scalar Charge and Dipolar Radiation in Binary Pulsars

Corrections to general relativity that introduce long-ranged scalar fields which are non-minimally coupled to curvature typically predict that neutron stars possess a non-trivial scalar field profile. An observer far from a star is most sensitive to the spherically-symmetric piece of this profile that decays linearly with the inverse of the distance, the so-called scalar charge, which is related to the emission of dipolar radiation from compact binaries. The presence of dipolar radiation has the potential to very strongly constrain extended theories of gravity. These facts may lead people to believe that gravitational theories with long-ranged scalar fields have already been constrained strongly from binary pulsar observations. Here we challenge this "lore" by investigating the decoupling limit of Gauss-Bonnet gravity as an example, in which the scalar field couples linearly to the Gauss-Bonnet density in the action. We prove a theorem that neutron stars in this theory cannot possess a scalar charge. Thus Gauss-Bonnet gravity evades the strong binary pulsar constraints on dipole radiation. We discuss the astrophysical systems yielding the best constraints on Gauss-Bonnet gravity and related quadratic gravity theories. To achieve this we explicitly compute the scalar charge for slowly-rotating neutron stars in quadratic gravity theories. In generic case, either neutron star-binary or neutron star-black hole systems can be used to constrain the theory, but Gauss-Bonnet gravity evades the neutron star-binary constraints. However, black holes in Gauss-Bonnet gravity do anchor scalar charge. The best constraints on Gauss-Bonnet gravity will thus come from black hole observations, for example via pulsar-black hole binaries. We estimate these constraints to be ten times better than the current estimated bound, and also include estimated constraints on generic quadratic gravity theories.

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arXiv2015

Post-Newtonian, Quasi-Circular Binary Inspirals in Quadratic Modified Gravity

We consider a general class of quantum gravity-inspired, modified gravity theories, where the Einstein-Hilbert action is extended through the addition of all terms quadratic in the curvature tensor coupled to scalar fields with standard kinetic energy. This class of theories includes Einstein-Dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet and Chern-Simons modified gravity as special cases. We analytically derive and solve the coupled field equations in the post-Newtonian approximation, assuming a comparable-mass, spinning black hole binary source in a quasi-circular, weak-field/slow-motion orbit. We find that a naive subtraction of divergent piece associated with the point-particle approximation is ill-suited to represent compact objects in these theories. Instead, we model them by appropriate effective sources built so that known strong-field solutions are reproduced in the far-field limit. In doing so, we prove that black holes in Einstein-Dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet and Chern-Simons theory can have hair, while neutron stars have no scalar monopole charge, in diametrical opposition to results in scalar-tensor theories. We then employ techniques similar to the direct integration of the relaxed Einstein equations to obtain analytic expressions for the scalar field, metric perturbation, and the associated gravitational wave luminosity measured at infinity. We find that scalar field emission mainly dominates the energy flux budget, sourcing electric-type (even-parity) dipole scalar radiation and magnetic-type (odd-parity) quadrupole scalar radiation, correcting the General Relativistic prediction at relative -1PN and 2PN orders. Such modifications lead to corrections in the emitted gravitational waves that can be mapped to the parameterized post-Einsteinian framework. Such modifications could be strongly constrained with gravitational wave observations.

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arXiv2015

Probing the Internal Composition of Neutron Stars with Gravitational Waves

Gravitational waves from neutron star binary inspirals contain information about the equation of state of supranuclear matter. In the absence of definitive experimental evidence that determines the correct equation of state, a number of diverse models that give the pressure in a neutron star as function of its density have been proposed. These models differ not only in the approximations and techniques they use to solve the many-body Schrödinger equation, but also in the neutron star composition they assume. We study whether gravitational wave observations of neutron star binaries in quasicircular inspirals will allow us to distinguish between equations of state of differing internal composition, thereby providing important information about the properties of extremely high density matter. We carry out a Bayesian model selection analysis, and find that second generation gravitational wave detectors can heavily constrain equations of state that contain only quark matter, but hybrid stars containing both normal and quark matter are harder to distinguish from normal matter stars. A gravitational wave detection with a signal-to-noise ratio of 30 and masses around $1.4M_{\odot}$ could either detect or rule out strange quark stars with a 20 to 1 confidence. The presence of kaon condensates or hyperons in neutron star inner cores cannot be easily confirmed. For example, for the equations of state studied in this paper, even a gravitational wave signal with a signal-to-noise ratio as high as 60 would not allow us to claim a detection of kaon condensates or hyperons with confidence greater than 5 to 1. On the other hand, if kaon condensates and hyperons do not form in neutron stars, a gravitational wave signal with similar signal-to-noise ratio would be able to constrain their existence with an 11 to 1 confidence for high-mass systems.

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arXiv2015

Is Einstein Still Right?

This is an article commissioned by the Spanish Physics Magazine ("Revista Española de Física") for the Centennial Anniversary of the discovery of General Relativity. The article reviews experimental and observational efforts to test Einstein's theory of General Relativity in a variety of scenarios (from the Solar System to binary pulsars, from the Sag A* to binary black hole and neutron star coalescences).

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arXiv2015

Four-Hair Relations for Differentially Rotating Neutron Stars in the Weak-Field Limit

The opportunity to study physics at supra-nuclear densities through X-ray observations of neutron stars has led to in-depth investigations of certain approximately universal relations that can remove degeneracies in pulse profile models. One such set of relations determines all of the multipole moments of a neutron star just from the first three (the mass monopole, the current dipole and the mass quadrupole moment) approximately independently of the equation of state. These three-hair relations were found to hold in neutron stars that rotate rigidly, as is the case in old pulsars, but neutron stars can also rotate differentially, as is the case for proto-neutron stars and hypermassive transient remnants of binary mergers. We here extend the three-hair relations to differentially rotating stars for the first time with a generic rotation law using two approximations: a weak-field scheme (an expansion in powers of the neutron star compactness) and a perturbative differential rotation scheme (an expansion about rigid rotation). These approximations allow us to analytically derive approximately universal relations that allow us to determine all of the multipole moments of a (perturbative) differentially rotating star in terms of only the first four moments. These new four-hair relations for differentially rotating neutron stars are found to be approximately independent of the equation of state to a higher degree than the three-hair relations for uniformly rotating stars. Our results can be instrumental in the development of four-hair relations for rapidly differentially rotating stars in full General Relativity using numerical simulations.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2015

Relating Follicly-Challenged Compact Stars to Bald Black Holes

Compact stars satisfy certain no-hair relations through which their multipole moments are given by their mass, spin and quadrupole moment. These relations are approximately independent of their equation of state, relating pressure to density. Such relations are similar to the black hole no-hair theorems, but these possess event horizons inside which information that led to their formation can hide. Compact stars do not possess horizons, so whether their no-hair relations are related to the black hole ones is unclear. We investigate how the two relations are related by studying relations among multipole moments for compact stars with anisotropic pressure as a toy model, which allows such stars to be more compact than those with isotropic pressure. We here show numerically that the compact star no-hair relations approach the black hole ones as the compactness approaches that of a black hole. We also prove analytically that the current dipole moment exactly reaches the black hole limit quadratically in compactness as strongly-anisotropic stars approach the black hole limit. We moreover show that compact stars become progressively oblate in this limit, even if prolate at low compactness due to strong anisotropies.

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arXiv2015

Improved Universality in the Neutron Star Three-Hair Relations

No-hair like relations between the multipole moments of the exterior gravitational field of neutron stars have recently been found to be approximately independent of the star's internal structure. This approximate, equation-of-state universality arises after one adimensionalizes the multipole moments appropriately, which then begs the question of whether there are better ways to adimensionalize the moments to obtain stronger universality. We here investigate this question in detail by considering slowly-rotating neutron stars both in the non-relativistic limit and in full General Relativity. We find that there exist normalizations that lead to stronger equation-of-state universality in the relations among the moment of inertia and the quadrupole, octopole and hexadecapole moments of neutron stars. We determine the optimal normalization that minimizes the equation-of-state dependence in these relations. The results found here may have applications in the modeling of X-ray pulses and atomic line profiles from millisecond pulsars with NICER and LOFT.

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arXiv2015

Slowly-Rotating Black Holes in Einstein-Dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet Gravity: Quadratic Order in Spin Solutions

We derive a stationary and axisymmetric black hole solution in Einstein-Dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity to quadratic order in the ratio of the spin angular momentum to the black hole mass squared. This solution introduces new corrections to previously found nonspinning and linear-in-spin solutions. The location of the event horizon and the ergosphere are modified, as well as the quadrupole moment. The new solution is of Petrov type I, although lower order in spin solutions are of Petrov type D. There are no closed timelike curves or spacetime regions that violate causality outside of the event horizon in the new solution. We calculate the modifications to the binding energy, Kepler's third law, and properties of the innermost stable circular orbit. These modifications are important for determining how the electromagnetic properties of accretion disks around supermassive black holes are changed from those expected in general relativity.

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arXiv2014

Spin-Precession: Breaking the Black Hole--Neutron Star Degeneracy

Mergers of compact stellar remnant are prime targets for the LIGO/Virgo gravitational wave detectors. One hopes that the gravitational wave signals from these merger events can be used to study the mass and spin distribution of stellar remnants, and provide information about black hole horizons and the material properties of neutron stars. However, it has been suggested that degeneracies in the way that the star's mass and spin are imprinted in the waveforms may make it impossible to distinguish between black holes and neutron stars. Here we show that the precession of the orbital plane due to spin-orbit coupling breaks the mass-spin degeneracy, and allows us to distinguish between standard neutron stars and alternative possibilities, such as black holes or exotic neutron stars with large masses and spins.

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arXiv2014

Projected Constraints on Lorentz-Violating Gravity with Gravitational Waves

Gravitational waves are excellent tools to probe the foundations of General Relativity in the strongly dynamical and non-linear regime. One such foundation is Lorentz symmetry, which can be broken in the gravitational sector by the existence of a preferred time direction, and thus, a preferred frame at each spacetime point. This leads to a modification in the orbital decay rate of binary systems, and also in the generation and chirping of their associated gravitational waves. We here study whether waves emitted in the late, quasi-circular inspiral of non-spinning, neutron star binaries can place competitive constraints on two proxies of gravitational Lorentz-violation: Einstein-Æther theory and khronometric gravity. We model the waves in the small-coupling (or decoupling) limit and in the post-Newtonian approximation, by perturbatively solving the field equations in small deformations from General Relativity and in the small-velocity/weak-gravity approximation. We assume a gravitational wave consistent with General Relativity has been detected with second- and third-generation, ground-based detectors, and with the proposed space-based mission, DECIGO, with and without coincident electromagnetic counterparts. Without a counterpart, a detection consistent with General Relativity of neutron star binaries can only place competitive constraints on gravitational Lorentz violation when using future, third-generation or space-based instruments. On the other hand, a single counterpart is enough to place constraints that are 10 orders of magnitude more stringent than current binary pulsar bounds, even when using second-generation detectors. This is because Lorentz violation forces the group velocity of gravitational waves to be different from that of light, and this difference can be very accurately constrained with coincident observations.

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arXiv2014

Constraining Lorentz-violating, Modified Dispersion Relations with Gravitational Waves

Modified gravity theories generically predict a violation of Lorentz invariance, which may lead to a modified dispersion relation for propagating modes of gravitational waves. We construct a parametrized dispersion relation that can reproduce a range of known Lorentz-violating predictions and investigate their impact on the propagation of gravitational waves. A modified dispersion relation forces different wavelengths of the gravitational wave train to travel at slightly different velocities, leading to a modified phase evolution observed at a gravitational-wave detector. We show how such corrections map to the waveform observable and to the parametrized post-Einsteinian framework, proposed to model a range of deviations from General Relativity. Given a gravitational-wave detection, the lack of evidence for such corrections could then be used to place a constraint on Lorentz violation. The constraints we obtain are tightest for dispersion relations that scale with small power of the graviton's momentum and deteriorate for a steeper scaling.

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