arXiv subjects

Vitor Cardoso

Publications and source records attributed to Vitor Cardoso.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Observational signatures of hot spots orbiting horizonless objects

Pushed by a number of advances, electromagnetic observatories have now reached the horizon scale of supermassive black holes. The existence and properties of horizons in our universe is one of the outstanding fundamental issues that can now be addressed. Here we investigate the ability to discriminate between black holes and compact, horizonless objects, focusing on the lensing of hot spots around compact objects. We work in particular with boson and Proca stars as central objects, and show that the absence of a horizon gives rise to a characteristic feature -- photons that plough through the central object and produce an extra image. This feature should be universal for central objects made of matter weakly coupled to the standard model.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Towards VLBI Observations of Black Hole Structure

Black holes hold a tremendous discovery potential. In this paper the extent to which the Event Horizon Telescope and its next generation upgrade can resolve their structure is quantified. Black holes are characterized by a perfectly absorptive boundary, with a specific area determined by intrinsic parameters of the black hole. We use a general parametrization of spherically symmetric spacetimes describing deviations from this behavior, with parameters controlling the size of the central object and its interaction with light, in particular through a specular reflection coefficient $Γ$ and an intrinsic luminosity measured as a fraction $η$ of that of the accretion disc. This enables us to study exotic compact objects and compare them with black holes in a model-independent manner. We determine the image features associated with the existence of a surface in the presence of a geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disc, identifying requirements for VLBI observations to be able to cast meaningful constraints on these parameters, in particular regarding angular resolution and image dynamic range. For face-on observations, constraints of order $η\lesssim 10^{-4}, Γ\lesssim 10^{-1}$ are possible with an enhanced EHT array, imposing strong constraints on the nature of the central object.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Electromagnetic emission from axionic boson star collisions

We explore the dynamics of boson stars in the presence of axionic couplings through nonlinear evolutions of Einstein's field equations. We show that, for large axionic couplings, isolated boson stars become unstable, and decay via a large burst of electromagnetic radiation, becoming less massive and more dilute. Our full nonlinear results are in good agreement with flat-space estimates for the critical couplings. We then consider head-on collisions of sub-critical boson stars and study the electromagnetic and gravitational signal. Boson stars cluster around the critical point via interactions, and we argue that mergers will generically be also sources of electromagnetic radiation, in addition to gravitational waves, which can be used to place constraints on the axionic coupling if such multimessenger signals are detected.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Applications of the close-limit approximation: horizonless compact objects and scalar fields

The ability to model the evolution of compact binaries from the inspiral to coalescence is central to gravitational wave astronomy. Current waveform catalogues are built from vacuum binary black hole models, by evolving Einstein equations numerically and complementing them with knowledge from slow-motion expansions. Much less is known about the coalescence process in the presence of matter, or in theories other than General Relativity. Here, we explore the Close Limit Approximation as a powerful tool to understand the coalescence process in general setups. In particular, we study the head-on collision of two equal-mass, compact but horizonless objects. Our results show the appearance of ``echoes'' and indicate that a significant fraction of the merger energy goes into these late-time repetitions. We also apply the Close Limit Approximation to investigate the effect of colliding black holes on surrounding scalar fields. Notably, our results indicate that observables obtained through perturbation theory may be extended to a significant segment of the merger phase, where in principle only a numerical approach is appropriate.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Dynamical friction of black holes in ultralight dark matter

In this work we derive simple closed-form expressions for the dynamical friction acting on black holes moving through ultralight (scalar field) dark matter, covering both non-relativistic and relativistic black hole speeds. Our derivation is based on long known scattering amplitudes in black hole spacetimes, it includes the effect of black hole spin and can be easily extended to vector and tensor light fields. Our results cover and complement recent numerical and previous non-relativistic treatments of dynamical friction in ultralight dark matter.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Resonances, black hole mimickers and the greenhouse effect: consequences for gravitational-wave physics

Ultracompact objects with photonspheres are known to mimic many observational features of black holes. It has been suggested that anomalous tidal heating or the presence of resonances in gravitational wave signals would be a clear imprint of a surface or absence of a horizon. Such claims and studies are all based on a frequency-domain analysis, assuming stationarity. Here we show that the object needs to first "fuel-up" until it reaches the stationary regime. The presence of a stable light ring and large light-travel times inside the object may in fact delay enormously the "charging-up" and effectively contribute to the effacement of structure. In other words, black hole mimickers behave as black holes more efficiently than previously thought. Our results have implications for other resonant systems with sharp resonances, including "floating orbits" around spinning black holes. A proper accounting of the self-force for such systems seems to be both mandatory, and would have important applications for tests of horizon physics.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Snowmass2021 Cosmic Frontier White Paper: Fundamental Physics and Beyond the Standard Model

Gravitational wave detectors are formidable tools to explore strong-field gravity, especially black holes and neutron stars. These compact objects are extraordinarily efficient at producing electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. As such, they are ideal laboratories for fundamental physics and have an immense discovery potential. The detection of black hole binaries by third-generation Earth-based detectors, space-based detectors and pulsar timing arrays will provide exquisite tests of general relativity. Loud "golden" events and extreme mass-ratio inspirals can strengthen the observational evidence for horizons by mapping the exterior spacetime geometry, inform us on possible near-horizon modifications, and perhaps reveal a breakdown of Einstein's gravity. Measurements of the black-hole spin distribution and continuous gravitational-wave searches can turn black holes into efficient detectors of ultralight bosons across ten or more orders of magnitude in mass. A precise monitoring of the phase of inspiralling binaries can constrain the existence of additional propagating fields and characterize the environment in which the binaries live, bounding the local dark matter density and properties. Gravitational waves from compact binaries will probe general relativity and fundamental physics in previously inaccessible regimes, and allow us to address fundamental issues in our current understanding of the cosmos.

hep-ph↗

arXiv2022

Destabilizing the Fundamental Mode of Black Holes: The Elephant and the Flea

Recent work applying the notion of pseudospectrum to gravitational physics showed that the quasinormal mode spectrum of black holes is unstable, with the possible exception of the longest-lived (fundamental) mode. The fundamental mode dominates the expected signal in gravitational wave astronomy, and there is no reason why it should have privileged status. We compute the quasinormal mode spectrum of two model problems where the Schwarzschild potential is perturbed by a small "bump" consisting of either a Pöschl-Teller potential or a Gaussian, and we show that the fundamental mode is destabilized under generic perturbations. We present phase diagrams and study a simple double-barrier toy problem to clarify the conditions under which the spectral instability occurs.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Love numbers and magnetic susceptibility of charged black holes

The response of black holes to companions is of fundamental importance in the context of their dynamics and of gravitational-wave emission. Here, we explore the effect of charge on the static response of black holes. With a view to constraining broader setups, we consider charged geometries in an arbitrary number of spacetime dimensions $D\geq4$. Tensor tidal Love numbers are shown to follow a power law in the black hole temperature $\sim T_{H}^{2l+1}$, and thus vanish at extremality. In contrast, the black hole charge $Q$ excites new modes of polarisation in the vector sector that are otherwise not responsive in the neutral limit. In four dimensions, Love numbers and magnetic susceptibilities vanish for all values of the charge that respect the extremality bound. Using the theory of Fuchsian equations we are able to obtain analytical results in most cases, even beyond the hypergeometric instances.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Black holes in galaxies: environmental impact on gravitational-wave generation and propagation

We introduce a family of solutions of Einstein's gravity minimally coupled to an anisotropic fluid, describing asymptotically flat black holes with "hair" and a regular horizon. These spacetimes can describe the geometry of galaxies harboring supermassive black holes, and are extensions of Einstein clusters to include horizons. They are useful to constrain the environment surrounding astrophysical black holes, using electromagnetic or gravitational-wave observations. We compute the main properties of the geometry, including the corrections to the ringdown stage induced by the external matter and fluxes by orbiting particles. The leading order effect to these corrections is a gravitational-redshift, but gravitational-wave propagation is affected by the galactic potential in a nontrivial way, and may be characterized with future observatories.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

The fate of observers in circular motion

In Newtonian physics or in general relativity, energy dissipation causes observers moving along circular orbits to slowly spiral towards the source of the gravitational field. We show that the loss of energy has the same effect in any theory of gravity respecting the weak equivalence principle, by exhibiting an intimate relation between the energy of a massive test particle and the stability of its orbit. Ultimately, massive particles either plunge, or are driven towards minima of the generalized Newtonian potential, where they become static. In addition, we construct a toy metric which displays an unbound innermost stable circular orbit, allowing particles that reach this orbit to be expelled away.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Quasinormal modes of Proca fields in a Schwarzschild-AdS spacetime

We present new results concerning the Proca massive vector field in a Schwarzschild-AdS black hole geometry. We provide a first principles analysis of Proca vector fields in this geometry using both the vector spherical harmonic (VSH) separation method and the Frolov-Krtouš-Kubizňák-Santos (FKKS) method that separates the relevant equations in spinning geometries. The analysis in the VSH method shows, on one hand, that it is arduous to separate the scalar-type from the vector-type polarizations of the electric sector of the Proca field, and on the other hand, it displays clearly the electric and the magnetic mode sectors. The analysis in the FKKS method is performed by taking the nonrotating limit of the Kerr-AdS spacetime, and shows that the ansatz decouples the polarizations in the electric mode sector even in the nonrotating limit. On the other hand, it captures only two of the three possible polarizations, the magnetic mode sector is missing. The reason for the absence of this polarization is related to the degeneracy of the principal tensor in static spherical symmetric spacetimes. The degrees of freedom and quasinormal modes in both separation methods of the Proca field are found. The frequencies of the quasinormal modes are also computed. For the electric mode sector in the VSH method the frequencies are found through an extension, which substitutes number coefficients by matrix coefficients, of the Horowitz-Hubeny numerical procedure, whereas for the magnetic mode sector in the VSH method and the electric sector of the FKKS method it is shown that a direct use of the procedure can be made. The values of the quasinormal mode frequencies obtained for each method are compared and showed to be in good agreement with each other. This further supports the analytical approaches presented here for the behavior of the Proca field in a Schwarzschild-AdS black hole background.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Binary superradiance: a numerical study

Rotating axisymmetric objects amplify incoming waves by superradiant scattering. When enclosed in a cavity, the repeated interaction of a confined field with the object may trigger superradiant instabilities. Rotating binaries are ubiquitous in physics, and play a fundamental role in astrophysics and in everyday life instruments. Such binaries may be prone to superradiant phenomena as well, but their inherent complexity makes it challenging to study how exactly such instabilities can be triggered. Here, we study a binary of two absorbing objects (mimicking black hole binaries, blades of an helicopter, etc) revolving around a common center, and show that superradiant instabilities do occur, on expected timescales and frequency range. Our results provide the first demonstration that superradiance also occurs for highly asymmetric systems, and may have a wealth of applications in fluid dynamics and astrophysics. Extrapolating to astrophysical black holes, our findings indicate that compact binaries may be used as interesting particle detectors, depositing a fraction of their energy into putative new fundamental ultralight degrees of freedom.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

The Effect of Mission Duration on LISA Science Objectives

The science objectives of the LISA mission have been defined under the implicit assumption of a 4 yr continuous data stream. Based on the performance of LISA Pathfinder, it is now expected that LISA will have a duty cycle of $\approx 0.75$, which would reduce the effective span of usable data to 3 yr. This paper reports the results of a study by the LISA Science Group, which was charged with assessing the additional science return of increasing the mission lifetime. We explore various observational scenarios to assess the impact of mission duration on the main science objectives of the mission. We find that the science investigations most affected by mission duration concern the search for seed black holes at cosmic dawn, as well as the study of stellar-origin black holes and of their formation channels via multi-band and multi-messenger observations. We conclude that an extension to 6 yr of mission operations is recommended.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2021

ECO-spotting: looking for extremely compact objects with bosonic fields

Black holes are thought to describe the geometry of massive, dark compact objects in the universe. To further support and quantify this long-held belief requires knowledge of possible, if exotic alternatives. Here, we wish to understand how compact can self-gravitating solutions be. We discuss theories with a well-posed initial value problem, consisting in either a single self-interacting scalar, vector or both. We focus on spherically symmetric solutions, investigating the influence of self-interacting potentials into the compactness of the solutions, in particular those that allow for flat-spacetime solutions. We are able to connect such stars to hairy black hole solutions, which emerge as a zero-mass black hole. We show that such stars can have light rings, but their compactness is never parametrically close to that of black holes. The challenge of finding black hole mimickers to investigate full numerical-relativity binary setups remains open.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Probing ultralight dark matter with future ground-based gravitational-wave detectors

Ultralight bosons are possible fundamental building blocks of nature, and promising dark matter candidates. They can trigger superradiant instabilities of spinning black holes (BHs) and form long-lived "bosonic clouds" that slowly dissipate energy through the emission of gravitational waves (GWs). Previous studies constrained ultralight bosons by searching for the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) emitted by these sources in LIGO data, focusing on the most unstable dipolar and quadrupolar modes. Here we focus on scalar bosons and extend previous works by: (i) studying in detail the impact of higher modes in the SGWB; (ii) exploring the potential of future proposed ground-based GW detectors, such as the Neutron Star Extreme Matter Observatory, the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer, to detect this SGWB. We find that higher modes largely dominate the SGWB for bosons with masses $\gtrsim 10^{-12}$ eV, which is particularly relevant for future GW detectors. By estimating the signal-to-noise ratio of this SGWB, due to both stellar-origin BHs and from a hypothetical population of primordial BHs, we find that future ground-based GW detectors could observe or constrain bosons in the mass range $\sim [7\times 10^{-14}, 2\times 10^{-11}]$ eV and significantly improve on current and future constraints imposed by LIGO and Virgo observations.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Evaporating black holes: constraints on anomalous emission mechanisms

Hawking radiation of astrophysical black holes is minute and thought to be unobservable. However, different mechanisms could contribute to an anomalously high emission rate: extra dimensions, new "dark" families of bosons or fermions, or a lower fundamental Planck scale. Do black holes flood the Universe with gravitational waves via mass loss? Here, we show that the formation of black hole binaries and the absence of a stochastic background of gravitational waves can limit the emission rate to $|\dot{M}|\lesssim 10^{-15}M_{\odot}/{\rm yr}$, seven orders of magnitude more stringent than bounds from resolvable inspiralling binaries.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Faint objects in motion: the new frontier of high precision astrometry

Sky survey telescopes and powerful targeted telescopes play complementary roles in astronomy. In order to investigate the nature and characteristics of the motions of very faint objects, a flexibly-pointed instrument capable of high astrometric accuracy is an ideal complement to current astrometric surveys and a unique tool for precision astrophysics. Such a space-based mission will push the frontier of precision astrometry from evidence of Earth-mass habitable worlds around the nearest stars, to distant Milky Way objects, and out to the Local Group of galaxies. As we enter the era of the James Webb Space Telescope and the new ground-based, adaptive-optics-enabled giant telescopes, by obtaining these high precision measurements on key objects that Gaia could not reach, a mission that focuses on high precision astrometry science can consolidate our theoretical understanding of the local Universe, enable extrapolation of physical processes to remote redshifts, and derive a much more consistent picture of cosmological evolution and the likely fate of our cosmos. Already several missions have been proposed to address the science case of faint objects in motion using high precision astrometry missions: NEAT proposed for the ESA M3 opportunity, micro-NEAT for the S1 opportunity, and Theia for the M4 and M5 opportunities. Additional new mission configurations adapted with technological innovations could be envisioned to pursue accurate measurements of these extremely small motions. The goal of this White Paper is to address the fundamental science questions that are at stake when we focus on the motions of faint sky objects and to briefly review instrumentation and mission profiles.

astro-ph.IM↗