arXiv subjects

Vojtěch Witzany

Publications and source records attributed to Vojtěch Witzany.

27 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Missing bright red giants in the Galactic center: A fingerprint of its once active state?

In the Galactic center nuclear star cluster, bright late-type stars exhibit a flat or even a decreasing surface-density profile, while fainter late-type stars maintain a cusp-like profile. Historically, the lack of red giants in the Galactic center was discovered via the drop in the strength of the CO absorption bandhead by Kris Sellgren et al. (1990), later followed by the stellar number counts based on the high angular resolution near-infrared observations. Several mechanisms were put forward that could have led to the preferential depletion of bright red giants: star-star collisions, tidal stripping, star-accretion disc collisions, or an infall of a massive cluster or a secondary black hole. Here we propose a novel scenario for the bright red-giant depletion based on the collisions between red giants and the nuclear jet, which was likely active in the Galactic center a few million years ago and could have led to the formation of the large-scale $γ$-ray Fermi bubbles. The process of the jet-induced ablation of red giants appears to be most efficient within $\sim 0.04\,{\rm pc}$ (S-cluster), while at larger distances it was complemented by star-accretion disc collisions and at smaller scales, tidal stripping operated. These three mechanisms likely operated simultaneously and created an apparent core of late-type stars within $\sim 0.5\,{\rm pc}$.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2019

Hamilton-Jacobi equation for spinning particles near black holes

A compact stellar-mass object inspiralling onto a massive black hole deviates from geodesic motion due to radiation-reaction forces as well as finite-size effects. Such post-geodesic deviations need to be included with sufficient precision into wave-form models for the upcoming space-based gravitational-wave detector LISA. I present the formulation and solution of the Hamilton-Jacobi equation of geodesics near Kerr black holes perturbed by the so-called spin-curvature coupling, the leading order finite-size effect. In return, this solution allows to compute a number of observables such as the turning points of the orbits as well as the fundamental frequencies of motion. This result provides one of the necessary ingredients for waveform models for LISA and an important contribution useful for the relativistic two-body problem in general.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Growth of resonances and chaos for a spinning test particle in the Schwarzschild background

Inspirals of stellar mass compact objects into supermassive black holes are known as extreme mass ratio inspirals. In the simplest approximation, the motion of the compact object is modeled as a geodesic in the space-time of the massive black hole with the orbit decaying due to radiated energy and angular momentum, thus yielding a highly regular inspiral. However, once the spin of the secondary compact body is taken into account, integrability is broken and prolonged resonances along with chaotic motion appear. We numerically integrate the motion of a spinning test body in the field of a non-spinning black hole and analyse it using various methods. We show for the first time that resonances and chaos can be found even for astrophysical values of spin. On the other hand, we devise a method to analyse the growth of the resonances, and we conclude that the resonances we observe are only caused by terms quadratic in spin and will generally stay very small in the small-mass-ratio limit. Last but not least, we compute gravitational waveforms by solving numerically the Teukolsky equations in the time-domain and establish that they carry information on the motion's dynamics. In particular, we show that the time series of the gravitational wave strain can be used to discern regular from chaotic motion of the source.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Probing the Nature of Black Holes: Deep in the mHz Gravitational-Wave Sky

Black holes are unique among astrophysical sources: they are the simplest macroscopic objects in the Universe, and they are extraordinary in terms of their ability to convert energy into electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. Our capacity to probe their nature is limited by the sensitivity of our detectors. The LIGO/Virgo interferometers are the gravitational-wave equivalent of Galileo's telescope. The first few detections represent the beginning of a long journey of exploration. At the current pace of technological progress, it is reasonable to expect that the gravitational-wave detectors available in the 2035-2050s will be formidable tools to explore these fascinating objects in the cosmos, and space-based detectors with peak sensitivities in the mHz band represent one class of such tools. These detectors have a staggering discovery potential, and they will address fundamental open questions in physics and astronomy. Are astrophysical black holes adequately described by general relativity? Do we have empirical evidence for event horizons? Can black holes provide a glimpse into quantum gravity, or reveal a classical breakdown of Einstein's gravity? How and when did black holes form, and how do they grow? Are there new long-range interactions or fields in our universe, potentially related to dark matter and dark energy or a more fundamental description of gravitation? Precision tests of black hole spacetimes with mHz-band gravitational-wave detectors will probe general relativity and fundamental physics in previously inaccessible regimes, and allow us to address some of these fundamental issues in our current understanding of nature.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2019

Spin-perturbed orbits near black holes

Inspirals of rotating stellar-mass compact objects into massive black holes are influenced by the spin-curvature coupling, which drives the compact body away from geodesic motion due to its rotation. I formulate the Hamilton-Jacobi equation for a spinning test body orbiting a Kerr black hole, solve it to linear order in spin, and use the perturbative solution to compute the fundamental frequencies of motion along the orbit. This result provides one of the necessary ingredients for waveform models for the upcoming space-based gravitational-wave detector LISA.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Recurrence analysis of spinning particles in the Schwarzschild background

In this work the dynamics of a spinning particle moving in the Schwarzschild background is studied. In particular, the methods of Poincaré section and recurrence analysis are employed to discern chaos from order. It is shown that the chaotic or regular nature of the orbital motion is reflected on the gravitational waves.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Hamiltonians and canonical coordinates for spinning particles in curved space-time

The spin-curvature coupling as captured by the so-called Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon (MPD) equations is the leading order effect of the finite size of a rapidly rotating compact astrophysical object moving in a curved background. It is also a next-to-leading order effect in the phase of gravitational waves emitted by extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs), which are expected to become observable by the LISA space mission. Additionally, exploring the Hamiltonian formalism for spinning bodies is important for the construction of the so-called Effective-One-Body waveform models that should eventually cover all mass ratios. The MPD equations require supplementary conditions determining the frame in which the moments of the body are computed. We review various choices of these supplementary spin conditions and their properties. Then, we give Hamiltonians either in proper-time or coordinate-time parametrization for the Tulczyjew-Dixon, Mathisson-Pirani, and Kyrian-Semerák conditions. Finally, we also give canonical phase-space coordinates parametrizing the spin tensor. We demonstrate the usefulness of the canonical coordinates for symplectic integration by constructing Poincaré surfaces of section for spinning bodies moving in the equatorial plane in Schwarzschild space-time. We observe the motion to be essentially regular for EMRI-ranges of the spin, but for larger values the Poincaré surfaces of section exhibit the typical structure of a weakly chaotic system. A possible future application of the numerical integration method is the inclusion of spin effects in EMRIs at the precision requirements of LISA.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2018

New closed analytical solutions for geometrically thick fluid tori around black holes: Numerical evolution and the onset of the magneto-rotational instability

When a black hole is accreting well below the Eddington rate, a geometrically thick, radiatively inefficient state of the accretion disk is established. There is a limited number of closed-form physical solutions for geometrically thick (non-selfgravitating) toroidal equilibria of perfect fluids orbiting a spinning black hole, and these are predominantly used as initial conditions for simulations of accretion in the aforementioned mode. However, different initial configurations might lead to different results and thus observational predictions drawn from such simulations. We expand the known equilibria by a number of closed multiparametric solutions with various possibilities of rotation curves and geometric shapes. Then, we ask whether choosing these as initial conditions influences the onset of accretion and the asymptotic state of the disk. We investigate a set of examples from the derived solutions in detail; we analytically estimate the growth of the magneto-rotational instability (MRI) from their rotation curves and evolve the analytically obtained tori using the 2D magneto-hydrodynamical code HARM. Properties of the evolutions are then studied through the mass, energy, and angular-momentum accretion rates. The rotation curve has a decisive role in the numerical onset of accretion in accordance with our analytical MRI estimates: In the first few orbital periods, the average accretion rate is linearly proportional to the initial MRI rate in the toroids. The final state obtained from any initial condition within the studied class after an evolution of $\gtrsim 10$ orbital periods is mostly qualitatively identical and the quantitative properties vary within a single order of magnitude. The average values of the energy of the accreted fluid have an irregular dependency on initial data, and in some cases fluid with energies many times its rest mass is systematically accreted.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2017

Exploiting the hidden symmetry of spinning black holes: conservation laws and numerical tests

The Kerr black hole is stationary and axisymmetric, which leads to conservation of energy and azimuthal angular momentum along the orbits of free test particles in its vicinity, but also to conservation laws for the evolution of continuum matter fields. However, the Kerr space-time possesses an additional "hidden symmetry" which exhibits itself in an unexpected conserved quantity along geodesics known as the Carter constant. We investigate the possibility of using this hidden symmetry to obtain conservation laws and other identities which could be used to test astrophysical simulations of the evolution of matter fields near spinning black holes. After deriving such identities, we set up a simple numerical toy model on which we demonstrate how they can detect the violations of evolution equations in a numerical simulation. Even though one of the expressions we derive is in the form of a conservation law, we end up recommending an equivalent but simpler expression that is not in the form of a conservation law for practical implementation.

gr-qc↗