arXiv subjects

Ruxandra Bondarescu

Publications and source records attributed to Ruxandra Bondarescu.

24 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2010

Lukewarm dark matter: Bose condensation of ultralight particles

We discuss the thermal evolution and Bose-Einstein condensation of ultra-light dark matter particles at finite, realistic cosmological temperatures. We find that if these particles decouple from regular matter before Standard model particles annihilate, their temperature will be about 0.9 K. This temperature is substantially lower than the temperature of CMB neutrinos and thus Big Bang Nucleosynthesis remains unaffected. In addition the temperature is consistent with WMAP 7-year+BAO+H0 observations without fine-tuning. We focus on particles of mass of $m\sim 10^{-23}$ eV, which have Compton wavelengths of galactic scales. Agglomerations of these particles can form stable halos and naturally prohibit small scale structure. They avoid over-abundance of dwarf galaxies and may be favored by observations of dark matter distributions. We present numerical as well as approximate analytical solutions of the Friedmann-Klein-Gordon equations and study the cosmological evolution of this scalar field dark matter from the early universe to the era of matter domination. Today, the particles in the ground state mimic presureless matter, while the excited state particles are radiation like.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2009

Spinning down newborn neutron stars: nonlinear development of the r-mode instability

We model the nonlinear saturation of the r-mode instability via three-mode couplings and the effects of the instability on the spin evolution of young neutron stars. We include one mode triplet consisting of the r-mode and two near resonant inertial modes that couple to it. We find that the spectrum of evolutions is more diverse than previously thought. The evolution of the star is dynamic and initially dominated by fast neutrino cooling. Nonlinear effects become important when the r-mode amplitude grows above its first parametric instability threshold. The balance between neutrino cooling and viscous heating plays an important role in the evolution. Depending on the initial r-mode amplitude, and on the strength of the viscosity and of the cooling this balance can occur at different temperatures. If thermal equilibrium occurs on the r-mode stability curve, where gravitational driving equals viscous damping, the evolution may be adequately described by a one-mode model. Otherwise, nonlinear effects are important and lead to various more complicated scenarios. Once thermal balance occurs, the star spins-down oscillating between thermal equilibrium states until the instability is no longer active. For lower viscosity we observe runaway behavior in which the r-mode amplitude passes several parametric instability thresholds. In this case more modes need to be included to model the evolution accurately. In the most optimistic case, we find that gravitational radiation from the r-mode instability in a very young, fast spinning neutron star within about 1 Mpc of Earth may be detectable by advanced LIGO for years, and perhaps decades, after formation. Details regarding the amplitude and duration of the emission depend on the internal dissipation of the modes of the star, which would be probed by such detections.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2008

Numerical Simulations of Oscillating Soliton Stars: Excited States in Spherical Symmetry and Ground State Evolutions in 3D

Excited state soliton stars are studied numerically for the first time. The stability of spherically symmetric S-branch excited state oscillatons under radial perturbations is investigated using a 1D code. We find that these stars are inherently unstable either migrating to the ground state or collapsing to black holes. Higher excited state configurations are observed to cascade through intermediate excited states during their migration to the ground state. This is similar to excited state boson stars. Ground state oscillatons are then studied in full 3D numerical relativity. Finding the appropriate gauge condition for the dynamic oscillatons is much more challenging than in the case of boson stars. Different slicing conditions are explored, and a customized gauge condition that approximates polar slicing in spherical symmetry is implemented. Comparisons with 1D results and convergence tests are performed. The behavior of these stars under small axisymmetric perturbations is studied and gravitational waveforms are extracted. We find that the gravitational waves damp out on a short timescale, enabling us to obtain the complete waveform. This work is a starting point for the evolution of real scalar field systems with arbitrary symmetries.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2007

Finite Mirror Effects in Advanced Interferometric Gravitational Wave Detectors

Thermal noise is expected to be the dominant source of noise in the most sensitive frequency band of second generation ground based gravitational wave detectors. Reshaping the beam to a flatter wider profile which probes more of the mirror surface reduces this noise. The "Mesa" beam shape has been proposed for this purpose and was subsequently generalized to a family of hyperboloidal beams with two parameters: twist angle alpha and beam width D. Varying alpha allows a continuous transition from the nearly-flat to the nearly-concentric Mesa beam configurations. We analytically prove that in the limit of infinite D hyperboloidal beams become Gaussians. The Advanced LIGO diffraction loss design constraint is 1 ppm per bounce. In the past the diffraction loss has often been calculated using the clipping approximation that, in general, underestimates the diffraction loss. We develop a code using pseudo-spectral methods to compute the diffraction loss directly from the propagator. We find that the diffraction loss is not a strictly monotonic function of beam width, but has local minima that occur due to finite mirror effects and leads to natural choices of D. For the Mesa beam a local minimum occurs at D = 10.67 cm and leads to a diffraction loss of 1.4 ppm. We find that if one requires a diffraction loss of strictly 1 ppm, the alpha = 0.91 pi hyperboloidal beam is optimal, leading to the coating thermal noise being lower by about 10% than for a Mesa beam while other types of thermal noise decrease as well. We then develop an iterative process that reconstructs the mirror to specifically account for finite mirror effects. This allows us to increase the D parameter and lower the coating noise by about 30% compared to the original Mesa configuration.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2007

Spin Evolution of Accreting Neutron Stars: Nonlinear Development of the R-mode Instability

The nonlinear saturation of the r-mode instability and its effects on the spin evolution of Low Mass X-ray Binaries (LMXBs) are modeled using the triplet of modes at the lowest parametric instability threshold. We solve numerically the coupled equations for the three mode amplitudes in conjunction with the spin and temperature evolution equations. We observe that very quickly the mode amplitudes settle into quasi-stationary states. Once these states are reached, the mode amplitudes can be found algebraically and the system of equations is reduced from eight to two equations: spin and temperature evolution. Eventually, the system may reach thermal equilibrium and either (1) undergo a cyclic evolution with a frequency change of at most 10%, (2) evolve toward a full equilibrium state in which the accretion torque balances the gravitational radiation emission, or (3) enter a thermogravitational runaway on a very long timescale of about $10^6$ years. Alternatively, a faster thermal runaway (timescale of about 100 years) may occur. The sources of damping considered are shear viscosity, hyperon bulk viscosity and boundary layer viscosity. We vary proprieties of the star such as the hyperon superfluid transition temperature T_c, the fraction of the star that is above the threshold for direct URCA reactions, and slippage factor, and map the different scenarios we obtain to ranges of these parameters. For all our bound evolutions the r-mode amplitude remains small $\sim 10^{-5}$. The spin frequency is limited by boundary layer viscosity to $ν_{max} \sim 800 Hz [S_{ns}/(M_{1.4} R_6)]^{4/11} T_8^{-2/11}$. We find that for $ν> 700$ Hz the r-mode instability would be active for about 1 in 1000 LMXBs and that only the gravitational waves from LMXBs in the local group of galaxies could be detected by advanced LIGO interferometers.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

Evolution of 3D Boson Stars with Waveform Extraction

Numerical results from a study of boson stars under nonspherical perturbations using a fully general relativistic 3D code are presented together with the analysis of emitted gravitational radiation. We have constructed a simulation code suitable for the study of scalar fields in space-times of general symmetry by bringing together components for addressing the initial value problem, the full evolution system and the detection and analysis of gravitational waves. Within a series of numerical simulations, we explicitly extract the Zerilli and Newman-Penrose scalar $Ψ_4$ gravitational waveforms when the stars are subjected to different types of perturbations. Boson star systems have rapidly decaying nonradial quasinormal modes and thus the complete gravitational waveform could be extracted for all configurations studied. The gravitational waves emitted from stable, critical, and unstable boson star configurations are analyzed and the numerically observed quasinormal mode frequencies are compared with known linear perturbation results. The superposition of the high frequency nonspherical modes on the lower frequency spherical modes was observed in the metric oscillations when perturbations with radial and nonradial components were applied. The collapse of unstable boson stars to black holes was simulated. The apparent horizons were observed to be slightly nonspherical when initially detected and became spherical as the system evolved. The application of nonradial perturbations proportional to spherical harmonics is observed not to affect the collapse time. An unstable star subjected to a large perturbation was observed to migrate to a stable configuration.

gr-qc↗