arXiv subjects

Yen Chin Ong

Publications and source records attributed to Yen Chin Ong.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

A Critical Assessment of Black Hole Solutions With a Linear Term in Their Redshift Function

Different theories of gravity can admit the same black hole solution, but the parameters usually have different physical interpretations. In this work we study in depth the linear term $βr$ in the redshift function of black holes, which arises in conformal gravity, de Rham-Gabadadze-Tolley (dRGT) massive gravity, $f(R)$ gravity (as approximate solution) and general relativity. Geometrically we quantify the parameter $β$ in terms of the curvature invariants. Astrophysically we found that $β$ can be expressed in terms of the cosmological constant, the photon orbit radius and the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) radius. The metric degeneracy can be broken once black hole thermodynamics is taken into account. Notably, we show that under Hawking evaporation, different physical theories with the same black hole solution (at the level of the metric) can lead to black hole remnants with different values of their physical masses with direct consequences on their viability as dark matter candidates. In particular, the mass of the graviton in massive gravity can be expressed in terms of the cosmological constant and of the formation epoch of the remnant. Furthermore the upper bound of remnant mass can be estimated to be around $0.5 \times 10^{27}$ kg.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Feasibility of Primordial Black Hole Remnants as Dark Matter in View of Hawking Radiation Recoil

It has recently been suggested that black hole remnants of primordial origin are not a viable dark matter candidate since they would have far too large a velocity due to the recoil of Hawking radiation. We re-examined this interesting claim in more details and found that it does not rule out such a possibility. On the contrary, for models based on non-commutativity of spacetime near the Planck scale, essentially the same argument can be used to estimate the scale at which non-commutativity effect becomes important. If dark matter "particles" are non-commutative black holes that have passed the maximum temperature, this implies that the non-commutative scale is about 100 times the Planck length. The same analysis applies to other black hole remnants whose temperature reaches a maximum before cooling off, for example, black holes in asymptotically safe gravity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

On the Counter-Rotation of Closed Timelike Curves

While it is tempting to think of closed timelike curves (CTCs) around rotating bodies such as a black hole as being "caused" by the rotation of the source, Andréka et al. pointed out that the underlying physics is not as straightforward since such CTCs are "counter-rotating", i.e., the time orientation (the opening of the local light cones) of the CTCs is opposite to the direction in which the singularity or the ergosphere rotates. It was also suggested that this is a generic phenomenon that calls for a deeper intuitive physical understanding. In this short note we point out -- with Kerr-Taub-NUT as an example -- that CTCs are counter-rotating with respect to the local angular velocity of the spacetime, which makes a physical interpretation of CTCs being "caused" by a rotating source even more problematic.

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arXiv2021

Regular Black Hole Interior Spacetime Supported by Three-Form Field

In this paper, we show that a minimally coupled 3-form endowed with a proper potential can support a regular black hole interior. By choosing an appropriate form for the metric function representing the radius of the 2-sphere, we solve for the 3-form field and its potential. Using the obtained solution, we construct an interior black hole spacetime which is everywhere regular. The singularity is replaced with a Nariai-type spacetime, whose topology is $\text{dS}_2 \times \text{S}^2$, in which the radius of the 2-sphere is constant. So long as the interior continues to expand indefinitely, the geometry becomes essentially compactified. The 2-dimensional de Sitter geometry appears despite the negative potential of the 3-form field. Such a dynamical compactification could shed some light on the origin of de Sitter geometry of our Universe, exacerbated by the Swampland conjecture. In addition, we show that the spacetime is geodesically complete. The geometry is singularity-free due to the violation of the null energy condition.

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arXiv2020

Null Hypersurface Caustics, Closed Null Curves, and Super-Entropy

Recently it was discovered that null hypersurfaces can develop caustics outside the event horizon of super-entropic Kerr-AdS black holes, in contrast to the usual Kerr-AdS case. In this work we explore a few more examples of black hole spacetimes in which such exterior caustics can develop. If a closed null curve is present, e.g., in the case of Taub-NUT and the "transunital" Kerr-AdS spacetimes, then it coincides with a null hypersurface caustic (NHC) of a minimal separation parameter. Thus a spacetime on the verge of forming closed timelike curves could develop a caustic. Known examples of super-entropic black holes also have exterior NHC, although such spacetimes are free of closed null/timelike curves. Nevertheless the relationship between closed causal curves, NHC, and super-entropy is not straightforward. This is best illustrated with the BTZ black string, which for some choices of the warp factor in the extra dimension and the value of the charge, can be super-entropic. However, even those that are not super-entropic can admit NHC outside the horizon.

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arXiv2020

Schwinger Pair Production and the Extended Uncertainty Principle: Can Heuristic Derivations Be Trusted?

The rate of Schwinger pair production due to an external electric field can be derived heuristically from the uncertainty principle. In the presence of a cosmological constant, it has been argued in the literature that the uncertainty principle receives a correction due to the background curvature, which is known as the "extended uncertainty principle" (EUP). We show that EUP does indeed lead to the correct result for Schwinger pair production rate in anti-de Sitter spacetime (the case for de Sitter spacetime is similar), provided that the EUP correction term is negative (positive for the de Sitter case). We compare the results with previous works in the EUP literature, which are not all consistent. Our result further highlights an important issue in the literature of generalizations of the uncertainty principle: how much can heuristic derivations be trusted?

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arXiv2020

The Interior Volume of Kerr-AdS Black Holes

The interior volume of black holes as defined by Christodoulou and Rovelli exhibits many surprising features. For example, it increases with time, even under Hawking evaporation. For some black holes, the interior volume is not even a monotonic increasing function of its area, which means one cannot infer how large a black hole is by just looking from the outside. Such a notion of volume, however, turns out to be useful in the context of holography, as it seems to be dual to the complexity of the boundary field theory. In this study, we investigate the properties of the interior volume of 4-dimensional Kerr-AdS black holes, fixing either the mass parameter $M$ or the physical mass $E$, whilst varying the values of the cosmological constant. We found that the volume as a function of the radial coordinate features a "double lobe" while fixing $M$, whereas fixing $E$ yields behaviors that are qualitatively similar to the asymptotically flat case. We briefly comment on the holographic complexity of Kerr-AdS black holes.

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arXiv2020

Hawking Evaporation of Black Holes in Massive Gravity

We study the Hawking evaporation of a class of black hole solutions in dRGT massive gravity, in which the graviton mass gives rise to an effective negative cosmological constant. We found that the effective emission surface can be either proportional to the square of the effective AdS length scale, or corresponds to the square of the impact parameter of the null geodesic that falls onto the photon orbit of the black hole. Furthermore, depending on the black hole parameters, the emission surface could switch from one to another as the black hole loses mass during the evaporation process. Furthermore, the black holes can either evaporate completely or become a remnant at late time. Our result is more generally applicable to any asymptotically anti-de Sitter-like black hole solution in any theory whose metric function has a term linear in the coordinate radius, with massive gravity being only a concrete example.

hep-th↗

arXiv2020

Thermodynamics of Shearing Massless Scalar Field Spacetimes is Inconsistent With the Weyl Curvature Hypothesis

Our Universe has an arrow of time. In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, entropy has been increasing ever since the Big Bang. The fact that matter is in thermal equilibrium in the very early Universe, as indicated by the cosmic microwave background, has led to the idea that gravitational entropy must be very low in the beginning. Penrose proposed that gravitational entropy can be quantified by the Weyl curvature, which increases as structures formed. A concrete realization of such a measure is the Clifton-Ellis-Tavakol gravitational entropy, which has been shown to be increasing in quite a number of cosmological models. In this work, we show a counter-example involving a class of inhomogeneous universes that are supported by a chameleon massless scalar field and exhibit anisotropic spacetime shearing effects. In fact, in our model the Clifton-Ellis-Tavakol gravitational entropy is increasing although the magnitude of the Weyl curvature is decreasing; this is due to the growth of the spacetime shear. The topology and the values of the three free parameters of the model are constrained by imposing a positive energy density for the cosmic fluid, and the thermodynamical requirements which follow from the cosmological holographic principle and the second law. It is shown that a negative deceleration parameter and a time decreasing Weyl curvature automatically follow from those conditions. Thus, we argue that our model can account for the formation of some primordial structures, like the Large Quasar Groups, which has required a non-standard evolution of the spatial anisotropies.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Black Hole Evaporation in Hořava-Lifshitz Gravity

Hořava-Lifshitz (HL) gravity was formulated in hope of solving the non-renormalization problem in Einstein gravity and the ghost problem in higher derivative gravity theories by violating Lorentz invariance. In this work we consider the spherically symmetric neutral AdS black hole evaporation process in HL gravity in various spacetime dimensions $d$, and with detailed balance violation parameter $0\leqslant ε^2\leqslant 1$. We find that the lifetime of the black holes under Hawking evaporation is dimensional dependent, with $d=4,5$ behave differently from $d\geqslant 6$. For the case of $ε=0$, in $d=4,5$, the black hole admits zero temperature state, and the lifetime of the black hole is always infinite. This phenomenon obeys the third law of black hole thermodynamics, and implies that the black holes become an effective remnant towards the end of the evaporation. As $d\geqslant 6$, however, the lifetime of black hole does not diverge with any initial black hole mass, and it is bounded by a time of the order of $\ell^{d-1}$, similar to the case of Schwarzschild-AdS in Einstein gravity (which corresponds to $ε^2=1$), though for the latter this holds for all $d\geqslant 4$. The case of $0<ε^2<1$ is also qualitatively similar with $ε=0$.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Event Horizon Wrinklification

The possible existence of stable black holes with entropies larger than the corresponding Schwarzschild black hole has been discussed extensively. The recently proposed "rough" black holes provide a concrete example of this. The fear is that, in accordance with the Second Law of thermodynamics, the familiar smooth-skinned black holes might spontaneously "wrinklify" into such an object. We show that this fear is to some extent justified, in the sense that AdS black holes with more entropy than the AdS-Schwarzschild black hole of the same mass do exist.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Spacetime Singularities and Cosmic Censorship Conjecture: A Review with Some Thoughts

The singularity theorems of Hawking and Penrose tell us that singularities are common place in general relativity. Singularities not only occur at the beginning of the Universe at the Big Bang, but also in complete gravitational collapses that result in the formation of black holes. If singularities - except the one at the Big Bang - ever become "naked", i.e., not shrouded by black hole horizons, then it is expected that problems would arise and render general relativity indeterministic. For this reason, Penrose proposed the cosmic censorship conjecture, which states that singularities should never be naked. Various counterexamples to the conjecture have since been discovered, but it is still not clear under which kind of physical processes one can expect violation of the conjecture. In this short review, I briefly examine some progresses in spacetime singularities and cosmic censorship conjecture. In particular, I shall discuss why we should still care about the conjecture, and whether we should be worried about some of the counterexamples. This is not meant to be a comprehensive review, but rather to give an introduction to the subject, which has recently seen an increase of interest.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Particle spectrum of the Reissner-Nordström black hole

The Reissner-Nordström black hole - moving mirror correspondence is solved. The beta coefficients reveal that charge makes a black hole radiate fewer particles (neutral massless scalars) per frequency. An old Reissner-Nordström black hole emits particles in an explicit Planck distribution with temperature corresponding to the surface gravity of its outer horizon.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

The Quantum Atmosphere of Reissner-Nordström Black Holes

Hawking radiation originates from a "quantum atmosphere" around black holes, not necessarily from the vicinity of the horizon. We examine and discuss the properties of quantum atmospheres of asymptotically flat Reissner-Nordström black holes, which extends further and further away from the black hole as extremality is approached, though arguably it becomes indistinguishable from normal vacuum fluctuation at spatial infinity. In addition, following our previous findings on re-writing the Hawking temperature of a Kerr black hole in terms of a "spring constant", we generalize the same notion to the Reissner-Nordström case, which allows us to put a minimum size on the location where Hawking particles can be emitted near a black hole, which agrees with the stretched horizon.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

The Horizon of the McVittie Black Hole: On the Role of the Cosmic Fluid Modeling

In this paper, we investigate the existence and time evolution of the cosmological and event horizons in a McVittie universe whose expansion is driven by the Redlich-Kwong, (Modified) Berthelot, Dieterici, and Peng-Robinson fluids, respectively. The equations of state of these fluids are rich enough to account for both exotic and regular, as well as ideal and non-ideal matter contents of the universe. We show that the cosmological horizon is expanding, while the event horizon is shrinking along the cosmic time evolution. The former achieves larger size for regular types of matter, contrary to the latter. The strength of interactions within the cosmic fluid are shown to play a more important role in affecting the evolution of the event horizon, rather than of the cosmological horizon in the case of a singularity-free universe. While the cosmological horizon always exists during the time evolution, the event horizon can exist only when a certain relationship between the Hawking-Hayward quasi-local mass and the Hubble function is fulfilled. In this manner, we can study the role played by the large-scale physics (cosmic evolution) on the local scale physics (evolution of a black hole).

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Holographic Principle and the Second Law in Stephani Cosmology Revisited

We show in a model-independent way that the inhomogeneous cosmological class II Stephani model fulfills both the the cosmological holographic principle, and that the entropy is increasing with time. By this we mean the result does not depend on any assumption on the time evolution of the scale factor, or on the matter content of the Universe, we also do not need to use the numerical values of the cosmological parameters, which are inferred in the framework of the usual homogeneous Friedmann model. Therefore our analysis is not affected by the tension of the current estimates of the Hubble parameter, and does not rely on any model-dependent assumption of the entropy amount at the present epoch. Our analysis allows us to set an upper limit for the inhomogeneity parameter of the model, an upper bound for the size that this type of universe can reach during the time evolution, a lower bound for the entropy abundance, and an estimate of the present day value of the deceleration parameter.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2020

Cosmic Censorship and the Evolution of d-Dimensional Charged Evaporating Black Holes

The cosmic censorship conjecture essentially states that naked singularities should not form from generic initial conditions. Since black hole parameters can change their values under Hawking evaporation, one has to ask whether it is possible to reach extremality by simply waiting for the black hole to evaporate. If so a slight perturbation would likely render the singularity naked. Fortunately, at least for the case of asymptotically flat 4-dimensional Reissner-Nordström black hole, Hiscock and Weems showed that it can never reach extremality despite the fact that for a sufficiently massive black hole, its charge-to-mass ratio can increase during Hawking evaporation. Hence cosmic censorship is never violated by Hawking emission. However, we know that under some processes, it is easier to violate cosmic censorship in higher dimensions, therefore it is crucial to generalize Hiscock and Weems model to dimensions above four to check cosmic censorship. We found that Hawking evaporation cannot lead to violation of cosmic censorship even in higher dimensional Reissner-Nordström spacetimes. Morerover, it seems to be more difficult to reach extremality as number of dimension increases.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2019

Curvature Invariants and Lower Dimensional Black Hole Horizons

It is known that the event horizon of a black hole can often be identified from the zeroes of some curvature invariants. The situation in lower dimensions has not been thoroughly clarified. In this work we investigate both (2+1)- and (1+1)-dimensional black hole horizons of static, stationary and dynamical black holes, identified with the zeroes of scalar polynomial and Cartan curvature invariants, with the purpose of discriminating the different roles played by the Weyl and Riemann curvature tensors. The situations and applicability of the methods are found to be quite different from that in 4-dimensional spacetime. The suitable Cartan invariants employed for detecting the horizon can be interpreted as a local extremum of the tidal force suggesting that the horizon of a black hole is a genuine special hypersurface within the full manifold, contrary to the usual claim that there is nothing special at the horizon, which is said to be a consequence of the equivalence principle.

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