Quasinormal modes of a massive Dirac field were calculated for various static black hole backgrounds with the help of the WKB formula. These estimations, however, are rough and valid only for very small values of $\mu M$, where $M$ and $\mu$ are mass of the black hole and field respectively. Thus, no accurate calculations of massive Dirac modes are known even for the Schwarzschild black hole and this is all the more so for the Kerr solution. Here we calculate quasinormal modes of a massive Dirac field in the Kerr background. We have shown that the infinitely long-lived quasinormal modes (quasiresonances), which exist for boson fields, appear also in the fermions’ quasinormal spectrum. Two chiralities of massive fermions lead to an additional “fine structure” in the spectrum. We discuss the effect of this fine structure on the behavior of quasiresonances and the stability. The analysis is also extended to a charged massive field in the Kerr-Newman background.

We report the explicit form of the general static, spherically symmetric, and asymptotically flat solution of vacuum Brans-Dicke gravity in the Jordan frame, assuming that the Brans-Dicke scalar field has no singularities or zeros (except possibly for a central singularity). This general solution is conformal to the Fisher-Wyman geometry of Einstein theory and its nature depends on a scalar charge parameter. Apart from the Schwarzschild black hole, only wormhole throats and central naked singularities are possible.

We present the black hole solutions possessing horizon with nonconstant-curvature and additional scalar restrictions on the base manifold in Lovelock gravity coupled to Born-Infeld (BI) nonlinear electrodynamics. The asymptotic and near origin behavior of the metric is presented and we analyze different behaviors of the singularity. We find that, in contrast to the case of black hole solutions of BI-Lovelock gravity with constant curvature horizon and Maxwell-Lovelock gravity with non constant horizon which have only timelike singularities, spacelike, and timelike singularities may exist for BI-Lovelock black holes with nonconstant curvature horizon. By calculating the thermodynamic quantities, we study the effects of nonlinear electrodynamics via the Born-Infeld action. Stability analysis shows that black holes with positive sectional curvature, $\kappa$, possess an intermediate unstable phase and large and small black holes are stable. We see that while Ricci flat Lovelock-Born-Infeld black holes having exotic horizons are stable in the presence of Maxwell field or either Born Infeld field with large born Infeld parameter $\beta$, unstable phase appears for smaller values of $\beta$, and therefore nonlinearity brings in the instability.

The ability to detect and scrutinize gravitational waves from the merger and coalescence of compact binaries opens up the possibility to perform tests of fundamental physics. One such test concerns the dark nature of compact objects: are they really black holes? It was recently pointed out that the absence of horizons—while keeping the external geometry very close to that of General Relativity—would manifest itself in a series of echoes in gravitational wave signals. The observation of echoes by LIGO/Virgo or upcoming facilities would likely inform us on quantum gravity effects or unseen types of matter. Detection of such signals is in principle feasible with relatively simple tools but would benefit enormously from accurate templates. Here we analytically individualize each echo waveform and show that it can be written as a Dyson series, for arbitrary effective potential and boundary conditions. We further apply the formalism to explicitly determine the echoes of a simple toy model: the Dirac delta potential. Our results allow to read off a few known features of echoes and may find application in the modeling for data analysis.

We present a systematic study of the cosmological dynamics resulting from an effective Hamiltonian, recently derived in loop quantum gravity using Thiemann’s regularization and earlier obtained in loop quantum cosmology (LQC) by keeping the Lorentzian term explicit in the Hamiltonian constraint. We show that quantum geometric effects result in higher than quadratic corrections in energy density in comparison to LQC, causing a nonsingular bounce. Dynamics can be described by the Hamilton or Friedmann-Raychaudhuri equations, but the map between the two descriptions is not one to one. A careful analysis resolves the tension on symmetric versus asymmetric bounce in this model, showing that the bounce must be asymmetric and symmetric bounce is physically inconsistent, in contrast to the standard LQC. In addition, the current observations only allow a scenario where the prebounce branch is asymptotically de Sitter, similar to a quantization of the Schwarzschild interior in LQC, and the postbounce branch yields the classical general relativity. For a quadratic potential, we find that a slow-roll inflation generically happens after the bounce, which is quite similar to what happens in LQC.

The $1/r$ expansion in the distance to the source is applied to the linearized $f(R)$ gravity, and its multipole expansion in the radiation field with irreducible Cartesian tensors is presented. Then, the energy, momentum, and angular momentum in the gravitational waves are provided for linearized $f(R)$ gravity. All of these results have two parts, which are associated with the tensor part and the scalar part in the multipole expansion of linearized $f(R)$ gravity, respectively. The former is the same as that in General Relativity, and the latter, as the correction to the result in General Relativity, is caused by the massive scalar degree of freedom and plays an important role in distinguishing General Relativity and $f(R)$ gravity.

Recently, a double-copy formalism was used to calculate gravitational radiation from classical Yang-Mills radiation solutions. This work shows that the Yang-Mills theory coupled to a biadjoint scalar field admits a radiative double copy that agrees with solutions in the Einstein-Yang-Mills theory at the lowest finite order. Within this context, the trace-reversed metric ${\overline{h}}^{\mu \nu }$ is a natural double copy of the gauge boson $A^{\mu a}$. This work provides additional evidence that solutions in gauge and gravity theories are related, even though their respective Lagrangians and nonlinear equations of motion appear to be different.

We propose a hybrid type of the conventional Higgs inflation and new Higgs inflation models. We perform a disformal transformation into the Einstein frame and analyze the background dynamics and the cosmological perturbations in the truncated model, in which we ignore the higher-derivative terms of the Higgs field. From the observed power spectrum of the density perturbations, we obtain the constraint on the nonminimal coupling constant $\xi$ and the mass parameter $M$ in the derivative coupling. Although the primordial tilt $n_s$ in the hybrid model barely changes, the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ moves from the value in the new Higgs inflationary model to that in the conventional Higgs inflationary model as $|\xi |$ increases. We confirm our results by numerical analysis by ADM formalism of the full theory in the Jordan frame.

The merger of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) is not expected to generate detectable electromagnetic (EM) emission. However, the gravitational wave (GW) events GW150914 and GW170104, detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory to be the result of merging, $\sim 60M_{\odot }$ binary black holes (BBHs), each have claimed coincident gamma-ray emission. Motivated by the intriguing possibility of an EM counterpart to BBH mergers, we construct a model that can reproduce the observed EM and GW signals for GW150914- and GW170104-like events, from a single-star progenitor. Following Loeb [Astrophys. J. Lett. 819, L21 (2016)], we envision a massive, rapidly rotating star within which a rotating-bar instability fractures the core into two overdensities that fragment into clumps which merge to form BHs in a tight binary with arbitrary spin-orbit alignment. Once formed, the BBH inspirals due to gas and gravitational-wave drag until tidal forces trigger strong feeding of the BHs with the surrounding stellar-density gas about 10 sec before merger. The resulting giga-Eddington accretion peak launches a jet that breaks out of the progenitor star and drives a powerful outflow that clears the gas from the orbit of the binary within 1 sec, preserving the vacuum GW waveform in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory band. The single-progenitor scenario predicts the existence of variability of the gamma-ray burst, modulated at the $\sim 0.2\sec$ chirping period of the BBH due to relativistic Doppler boost. The jet breakout should be accompanied by a low-luminosity supernova. Finally, because the BBHs of the single-progenitor model do not exist at large separations, they will not be detectable in the low-frequency gravitational-wave band of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna. Hence, the single-progenitor BBHs will be unambiguously discernible from BBHs formed through alternate, double-progenitor evolution scenarios.

The constant-roll inflation is studied where the inflaton is taken as a tachyon field. Based on this approach, the second slow-roll parameter is taken as a constant which leads to a differential equation for the Hubble parameter. Finding an exact solution for the Hubble parameter is difficult and leads us to a numerical solution for the Hubble parameter. On the other hand, since in this formalism the slow-roll parameter $\eta$ is constant and could not be assumed to be necessarily small, the perturbation parameters should be reconsidered again which, in turn, results in new terms appearing in the amplitude of scalar perturbations and the scalar spectral index. Utilizing the numerical solution for the Hubble parameter, we estimate the perturbation parameter at the horizon exit time and compare it with observational data. The results show that, for specific values of the constant parameter $\eta$, we could have an almost scale-invariant amplitude of scalar perturbations. Finally, the attractor behavior for the solution of the model is presented, and we determine that the feature could be properly satisfied.

The GRAPES-3 muon telescope in Ooty, India had claimed detection of a 2 hour (h) high-energy ($\sim 20\mathrm{GeV}$) burst of galactic cosmic-rays (GCRs) through a $>50\sigma$ surge in GeV muons, was caused by reconnection of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) in the magnetosphere that led to transient weakening of Earth’s magnetic shield. This burst had occurred during a G4-class geomagnetic storm (storm) with a delay of $\frac{1}{2}\mathrm{h}$ relative to the coronal mass ejection (CME) of 22 June 2015 [P. K. Mohanty et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 171101 (2016)]. However, recently a group interpreted the occurrence of the same burst in a subset of 31 neutron monitors (NMs) to have been the result of an anisotropy in interplanetary space [P. Evenson et al., Proc. Sci., ICRC2017 (2017) 133] in contrast to the claim in P. K. Mohanty et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 171101 (2016)]. A new analysis of the GRAPES-3 data with a fine 10.6° angular segmentation shows the speculation of interplanetary anisotropy to be incorrect, and offers a possible explanation of the NM observations. The observed 28 minutes (min) delay of the burst relative to the CME can be explained by the movement of the reconnection front from the bow shock to the surface of Earth at an average speed of $35\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}$, much lower than the CME speed of $700\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}$. This measurement may provide a more accurate estimate of the start of the storm.

We study fluctuations around equilibrium in a class of strongly interacting nonconformal plasmas using holographic techniques. In particular, we calculate the quasinormal mode spectrum of black hole backgrounds that approach Chamblin-Reall plasmas in the IR. In a specific limit, related to the exact linear-dilaton background in string theory, we observe that the plasma approaches criticality and we obtain the quasinormal spectrum analytically. We regulate the critical limit by gluing the IR geometry that corresponds to the nonconformal plasma to a part of AdS space-time in the UV. Near criticality, the spectrum can still be computed analytically and we find two sets of quasinormal modes, related to the IR and UV parts of the geometry. In the critical limit, the quasinormal modes accumulate to form a branch cut in the correlators of the energy-momentum tensor on the real axis of the complex frequency plane.

We investigate both (pseudo)scalar mesons and diquarks in the presence of external magnetic field in the framework of the two-flavored Nambu–Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, where mesons and diquarks are constructed by infinite sum of quark-loop chains by using random phase approximation. The polarization function of the quark-loop is calculated to the leading order of $1/N_c$ expansion by taking the quark propagator in the Landau level representation. We systematically investigate the masses behaviors of scalar $\sigma$ meson, neutral and charged pions as well as the scalar diquarks, with respect to the magnetic field strength at finite temperature and chemical potential. It is shown that the numerical results of both neutral and charged pions are consistent with the lattice QCD simulations. The mass of the charge neutral pion keeps almost a constant under the magnetic field, which is preserved by the remnant symmetry of $\mathrm{QCD}\times \mathrm{QED}$ in the vacuum. The mass of the charge neutral scalar $\sigma$ is around two times quark mass and increases with the magnetic field due to the magnetic catalysis effect, which is an typical example showing that the polarized internal quark structure cannot be neglected when we consider the meson properties under magnetic field. For the charged particles, the one quark-antiquark loop contribution to the charged ${\pi }^{\pm }$ increases essentially with the increase of magnetic fields due to the magnetic catalysis of the polarized quarks. However, the one quark-quark loop contribution to the scalar diquark mass is negative comparing with the point-particle result and the loop effect is small.

In this paper, we investigate the prospects of measuring the strong and weak dipole moments of the top quark at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Measurements of these couplings provide an excellent opportunity to probe new physics interactions as they have quite small magnitudes in the standard model. Our analyses are performed using the production cross sections of $t\overline{t}WW$ and $t\overline{t}ZZ$ processes in the same sign dilepton and four-lepton final states, respectively. The sensitivities to strong and weak top quark dipole interactions at the 95% confidence level for various integrated luminosity scenarios are derived and compared with other studies. To estimate the constraints, the main source of backgrounds and a realistic simulation of the detector response are considered.

Guided by gauge principles we discuss a predictive and falsifiable UV complete model where the Dirac fermion that accounts for the cold dark matter abundance in our Universe induces the lepton flavor violation (LFV) decays $\mu \to e\gamma$ and $\mu \to eee$ as well as $\mu -e$ conversion. We explore the interplay between direct dark matter detection, relic density, collider probes and lepton flavor violation to conclusively show that one may have a viable dark matter candidate yielding flavor violation signatures that can be probed in the upcoming experiments. In fact, keeping the dark matter mass at the TeV scale, a sizable LFV signal is possible, while reproducing the correct dark matter relic density and meeting limits from direct-detection experiments.

We investigate the lattice spacing dependence of the equilibration time for a recently proposed multiscale thermalization algorithm for Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations. The algorithm uses a renormalization-group matched coarse lattice action and prolongation operation to rapidly thermalize decorrelated initial configurations for evolution using a corresponding target lattice action defined at a finer scale. Focusing on nontopological long-distance observables in pure $SU(3)$ gauge theory, we provide quantitative evidence that the slow modes of the Markov process, which provide the dominant contribution to the rethermalization time, have a suppressed contribution toward the continuum limit, despite their associated timescales increasing. Based on these numerical investigations, we conjecture that the prolongation operation used herein will produce ensembles that are indistinguishable from the target fine-action distribution for a sufficiently fine coupling at a given level of statistical precision, thereby eliminating the cost of rethermalization.

The cross section for back-to-back hadron pair production in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation provides access to the dihadron fragmentation functions (DiFF) needed to extract nucleon parton distribution functions from the semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) experiments with two detected final state hadrons. Particular attention is given to the so-called interference DiFF (IFF), which makes it possible to extract the transversity parton distribution of the nucleon in the collinear framework. However, previously unnoticed discrepancies were recently highlighted between the definitions of the IFFs appearing in the collinear kinematics when reconstructed from DiFFs entering the unintegrated fully differential cross sections of SIDIS and $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation processes. In this work, to clarify this problem we re-derive the fully differential cross section for $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation at the leading-twist approximation. We find a mistake in the definition of the kinematics in the original expression that systematically affects a subset of terms and that leads to two significant consequences. First, the discrepancy between the IFF definitions in the cross sections for SIDIS and $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation is resolved. Second, the previously derived azimuthal asymmetry for accessing the helicity dependent DiFF $G_1^{\perp }$ in $e^{+}{e}^{-}$ annihilation vanishes, which explains the nonobservation of this asymmetry in the recent experimental searches by the BELLE collaboration. We discuss the recently proposed alternative option to extract $G_1^{\perp }$.

The electric dipole moments (EDMs) of nucleons are sensitive probes of additional $CP$ violation sources beyond the standard model to account for the baryon number asymmetry of the universe. As a fundamental quantity of the nucleon structure, tensor charge is also a bridge that relates nucleon EDMs to quark EDMs. With a combination of nucleon EDM measurements and tensor charge extractions, we investigate the experimental constraint on quark EDMs, and its sensitivity to $CP$ violation sources from new physics beyond the electroweak scale. We obtain the current limits on quark EDMs as $1.27\times {10}^{-24}e·\mathrm{cm}$ for the up quark and $1.17\times {10}^{-24}e·\mathrm{cm}$ for the down quark at the scale of $4{\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. We also study the impact of future nucleon EDM and tensor charge measurements, and show that upcoming new experiments will improve the constraint on quark EDMs by about 3 orders of magnitude leading to a much more sensitive probe of new physics models.