The black hole information paradox is related to the area of event horizon, and potentially to the volume and singularity behind it. One example is the complexity/volume duality conjectured by Stanford and Susskind. Accepting the proposal of Christodoulou and Rovelli, we calculate the maximal volume inside regular black holes, which are free of curvature singularity, in asymptotically flat and anti-de Sitter spacetimes respectively. The complexity/volume duality is then applied to anti-de Sitter regular black holes. We also present an analytical expression for the maximal volume outside the de Sitter horizon.

In this paper we consider spin-$3/2$ fields in a $D$-dimensional Reissner-Nordström black hole spacetime. As these spacetimes are not Ricci flat, it is necessary to modify the covariant derivative to the supercovariant derivative, by including terms related to the background electromagnetic fields, so as to maintain the gauge symmetry. Using this supercovariant derivative we arrive at the corresponding Rarita-Schwinger equation in a charged black hole background. As in our previous works, we exploit the spherical symmetry of the spacetime and use the eigenspinor vectors on an $N$ sphere to derive the radial equations for both nontransverse-traceless (non-TT) modes and TT modes. We then determine the quasinormal mode and absorption probabilities of the associated gauge-invariant variables using the WKB approximation and the asymptotic iteration method. We then concentrate on how these quantities change with the charge of the black hole, especially when they reach the extremal limits.

The Einstein-Maxwell theory with negative cosmological constant in three spacetime dimensions is considered. It is shown that the Smarr relation for the electrically charged Bañados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) black hole emerges from two different approaches based on the scaling symmetry of the asymptotic behavior of the fields at infinity. In the first approach, we prove that the conservation law associated to the scale invariance of the action for a class of stationary and circularly symmetric configurations, allows to obtain the Smarr formula as long as a special set of holographic boundary conditions is satisfied. This particular set is singled out making the integrability conditions for the energy compatible with the scale invariance of the reduced action. In the second approach, it is explicitly shown that the Smarr formula is recovered through the Euler theorem for homogeneous functions, provided the same set of holographic boundary conditions is fulfilled.

We investigate the gravitational memory effect for linearized perturbations off of Minkowski space in odd spacetime dimensions $d$ by examining the effects of gravitational radiation from classical point particle scattering. We also investigate analogous memory effects for electromagnetic and scalar radiation. We find that there is no gravitational memory effect in all odd dimensions. For scalar and electromagnetic fields, there is no memory effect for $d\ge 7$; for $d=3$ there is an infinite momentum memory effect, whereas for $d=5$ there is no momentum memory effect but the displacement of a test particle will grow unboundedly with time. Our results are further elucidated by analyzing the memory effect for any slowly moving source of compact spatial support in odd dimensions.

On the holographic complexity dual to the bulk action, we investigate the action growth for a shock wave geometry in a massive gravity theory within the Wheeler-DeWitt (WDW) patch at the late time limit. For a global shock wave, the graviton mass does not affect the action growth in the bulk, i.e., the complexity on the boundary, showing that the action growth (complexity) is the same for both the Einstein gravity and the massive gravity. Nevertheless, for a local shock wave that depends on transverse coordinates, the action growth (complexity) caused by the boundary disturbance (perturbation) is proportional to the butterfly velocity for the two gravity theories, but the butterfly velocity of the massive gravity theory is smaller than that of the Einstein gravity theory, indicating that the action growth (complexity) of the massive gravity is depressed by the graviton mass. In addition, we extend the black hole thermodynamics of the massive gravity and obtain the right Smarr formula.

A class of exact rotating black hole solutions of gravity nonminimally coupled to a self-interacting scalar field in arbitrary dimensions is presented. These spacetimes are asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter manifolds and have a Ricci-flat event horizon hiding a curvature singularity at the origin. The scalar field is real and regular everywhere, and its effective mass, coming from the nonminimal coupling with the scalar curvature, saturates the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound for the corresponding spacetime dimension. The rotating black hole is obtained by applying an improper coordinate transformation to the static one. Although both spacetimes are locally equivalent, they are globally different, as it is confirmed by the nonvanishing angular momentum of the rotating black hole. It is found that the mass is bounded from below by the angular momentum, in agreement with the existence of an event horizon. The thermodynamical analysis is carried out in the grand canonical ensemble. The first law is satisfied, and a Smarr formula is exhibited. The thermodynamical local stability of the rotating hairy black holes is established from their Gibbs free energy. However, the global stability analysis establishes that the vacuum spacetime is always preferred over the hairy black hole. Thus, the hairy black hole is likely to decay into the vacuum one for any temperature.

We study a rapidly oscillating scalar field with potential $V(\varphi )=k|\varphi {|}^n$ nonminimally coupled to the Ricci scalar $R$ via a term of the form $(1-8\pi G_0\xi {\varphi }^2)R$ in the action. In the weak coupling limit, we calculate the effect of the nonminimal coupling on the time-averaged equation of state parameter $\gamma =(p+\rho )/\rho$. The change in $⟨\gamma ⟩$ is always negative for $n\ge 2$ and always positive for $n<0.71$ (which includes the case where the oscillating scalar field could serve as dark energy), while it can be either positive or negative for intermediate values of $n$. Constraints on the time variation of $G$ force this change to be infinitesimally small at the present time whenever the scalar field dominates the expansion, but constraints in the early universe are not as stringent. The rapid oscillation induced in $G$ also produces an additional contribution to the Friedman equation that behaves like an effective energy density with a stiff equation of state, but we show that, under reasonable assumptions, this effective energy density is always smaller than the density of the scalar field itself.

In this paper we present cosmological constraints on several well-known $f(R)$ models, but also on a new class of models that are variants of the Hu-Sawicki one of the form $f(R)=R-\frac{2\mathrm{\Lambda }}{1+by(R,\mathrm{\Lambda })}$, that interpolate between the cosmological constant model and a matter dominated universe for different values of the parameter $b$, which is usually expected to be small for viable models and which in practice measures the deviation from general relativity. We use the latest growth rate, cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations, supernovae type Ia and Hubble parameter data to place stringent constraints on the models and to compare them to the cosmological constant model but also other viable $f(R)$ models such as the Starobinsky or the degenerate hypergeometric models. We find that these kinds of Hu-Sawicki variant parametrizations are in general compatible with the currently available data and can provide useful toy models to explore the available functional space of $f(R)$ models, something very useful with the current and upcoming surveys that will test deviations from general relativity.

We present a formalism based on the large deviation principle (LDP) applied to cosmological density fields, and more specifically to the arbitrary functional of density profiles, and we apply it to the derivation of the cumulant generating function and one-point probability distribution function (PDF) of the aperture mass ($M_{\mathrm{ap}}$), a common observable for cosmic shear observations. We show that the LDP can indeed be used in practice for a much larger family of observables than previously envisioned, such as those built from continuous and nonlinear functionals of density profiles. Taking advantage of this formalism, we can extend previous results, which were based on crude definitions of the aperture mass, with top-hat windows and the use of the reduced shear approximation (replacing the reduced shear with the shear itself). We were precisely able to quantify how this latter approximation affects the $M_{\mathrm{ap}}$ statistical properties. In particular, we derive the corrective term for the skewness of the $M_{\mathrm{ap}}$ and reconstruct its one-point PDF.

We identify in the flavor transformation of astrophysical neutrinos a new class of phenomena, a common outcome of which is the suppression of flavor conversion. Appealing to the equivalence between a bipolar neutrino system and a gyroscopic pendulum, we find that these phenomena have rather striking interpretations in the mechanical picture: in one instance, the gyroscopic pendulum initially precesses in one direction, then comes to a halt and begins to precess in the opposite direction—a counterintuitive behavior that we analogize to the motion of a toy known as a rattleback. We analyze these behaviors in the early Universe, wherein a chance connection to sterile neutrino dark matter emerges, and we briefly suggest how they might manifest in compact-object environments.

Measuring precise all-flavor neutrino information from a supernova is crucial for understanding the core-collapse process as well as neutrino properties. We apply a chi-squared analysis for different detector setups to explore determination of ${\nu }_e$ spectral parameters. Using a long-term two-dimensional core-collapse simulation with three time-varying spectral parameters, we generate mock data to examine the capabilities of the current Super-Kamiokande detector and compare the relative improvements that gadolinium, Hyper-Kamiokande, and DUNE would have. We show that in a realistic three spectral parameter framework, the addition of gadolinium to Super-Kamiokande allows for a qualitative improvement in ${\nu }_e$ determination. Efficient neutron tagging will allow Hyper-Kamiokande to constrain spectral information more strongly in both the accretion and cooling phases. Overall, significant improvements will be made by Hyper-Kamiokande and DUNE, allowing for much more precise determination of ${\nu }_e$ spectral parameters.

We investigate the equation of state (EoS) and the effect of the hadron-quark phase transition of strong interaction matter in compact stars. The hadron matter is described with the relativistic mean field theory, and the quark matter is described with the Dyson-Schwinger equation approach of QCD. The complete EoS of the hybrid star matter is constructed with not only the Gibbs construction but also the 3-window interpolation. The mass-radius relation of hybrid stars is also investigated. We find that, although the EoS of both the hadron matter with hyperon and $\mathrm{\Delta }$-baryon and the quark matter are generally softer than that of the nucleon matter, the 3-window interpolation construction may provide an EoS stiff enough for a hybrid star with mass exceeding $2M_{\odot }$ and, in turn, solve the so-called “hyperon puzzle.”

Neutrinos in dense environments undergo collective pair conversions ${\nu }_e{\overline{\nu }}_e\leftrightarrow {\nu }_x{\overline{\nu }}_x$, where $x$ is a nonelectron flavor, due to forward scattering off each other that may be a crucial ingredient for supernova explosions. Depending on the flavor-dependent local angular distributions of the neutrino fluxes, the conversion rate can be “fast,” i.e., of the order $\mu =\sqrt{2}{G}_F{n}_{\nu }$, which can far exceed the usual neutrino oscillation frequency $\omega =\mathrm{\Delta }{m}^2/(2E)$. Until now, this surprising nonlinear phenomenon has only been understood in the linear regime and explored further using numerical experiments. We present an analytical treatment of the simplest system that exhibits fast conversions, and show that the conversion can be understood as the dynamics of a particle rolling down in a quartic potential, governed dominantly by $\mu$ but seeded by slower subleading effects.

We estimate bottomonium yields in relativistic heavy-ion collisions using a lattice QCD vetted, complex-valued, heavy-quark potential embedded in a realistic, hydrodynamically evolving medium background. We find that the lattice-vetted functional form and temperature dependence of the proper heavy-quark potential dramatically reduces the dependence of the yields on parameters other than the temperature evolution, strengthening the picture of bottomonium as QGP thermometer. Our results also show improved agreement between computed yields and experimental data produced in RHIC $200\mathrm{GeV}/\mathrm{nucleon}$ collisions. For LHC $2.76\mathrm{TeV}/\mathrm{nucleon}$ collisions, the excited states, whose suppression has been used as a vital sign for quark-gluon-plasma production in a heavy-ion collision, are reproduced better than previous perturbatively-motivated potential models; however, at the highest LHC energies our estimates for bottomonium suppression begin to underestimate the data. Possible paths to remedy this situation are discussed.

The Born–Oppenheimer approximation is the standard tool for the study of molecular systems. It is founded on the observation that the energy scale of the electron dynamics in a molecule is larger than that of the nuclei. A very similar physical picture can be used to describe QCD states containing heavy quarks as well as light-quarks or gluonic excitations. In this work, we derive the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for QED molecular systems in an effective field theory framework by sequentially integrating out degrees of freedom living at energies above the typical energy scale where the dynamics of the heavy degrees of freedom occurs. In particular, we compute the matching coefficients of the effective field theory for the case of the $H_2^{+}$ diatomic molecule that are relevant to compute its spectrum up to $\mathcal{O}(m{\alpha }^5)$. Ultrasoft photon loops contribute at this order, being ultimately responsible for the molecular Lamb shift. In the effective field theory the scaling of all the operators is homogeneous, which facilitates the determination of all the relevant contributions, an observation that may become useful for high-precision calculations. Using the above case as a guidance, we construct under some conditions an effective field theory for QCD states formed by a color-octet heavy quark-antiquark pair bound with a color-octet light-quark pair or excited gluonic state, highlighting the similarities and differences between the QED and QCD systems. Assuming that the multipole expansion is applicable, we construct the heavy-quark potential up to next-to-leading order in the multipole expansion in terms of nonperturbative matching coefficients to be obtained from lattice QCD.

We discuss the possibility that the $X(3872)$ can be a $D{\overline{D}}^{*}$ molecular bound state in the Bethe-Salpeter equation approach in the ladder and instantaneous approximations. We show that the $D{\overline{D}}^{*}$ bound state with quantum numbers $J^{PC}=1^{++}$ exists. We also calculate the decay width of $X(3872)\to \gamma J/\psi$ channel and compare our result with those from previous calculations.

In K. Dusling et al. [arXiv:1705.00745.], an initial-state “parton model” of quarks scattering off a dense nuclear target was shown to qualitatively reproduce the systematics of multiparticle azimuthal anisotropy cumulants measured in proton/deuteron-nucleus ($pA$) collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and the LHC. The systematics included (i) the behavior of the four-particle cumulant $c_2\{4\}$, which generates a real four-particle second Fourier harmonic $v_2\{4\}$; (ii) the ordering $v_2\{2\}>v_2\{4\}\approx v_2\{6\}\approx v_2\{8\}$ for two-, four-, six-, and eight-particle Fourier harmonics; and (iii) the behavior of so-called symmetric cumulants SC(2,3) and SC(2,4). These features of azimuthal multiparticle cumulants were previously interpreted as a signature of hydrodynamic flow; our results challenge this interpretation. We expand here upon our previous study and present further details and novel results on the saturation scale and transverse momentum ($p_{\perp }$) dependence of multiparticle azimuthal correlations. We find that the dependence of $v_2\{2\}$ and $v_2\{4\}$ on the number of color domains in the target varies with the $p_{\perp }$ window explored. We extend our prior discussion of symmetric cumulants and compute as yet unmeasured symmetric cumulants. We investigate the $N_c$ dependence of $v_2\{2\}$ and $v_2\{4\}$. We contrast our results, which include multiple scatterings of each quark off the target, to the Glasma graph approximation, where each quark suffers at most two-gluon exchanges with the target. We find that coherent multiple scattering is essential to obtain a positive definite $v_2\{4\}$. We provide an algorithm to compute expectation values of arbitrary products of the “dipole” lightlike Wilson line correlators.

We consider a gauged $CP(2)$ theory in the presence of the Chern-Simons action, focusing our attention on those time-independent solutions possessing radial symmetry. In this context, we develop a coherent first-order framework via the Bogomol’nyi prescription, from which we obtain the corresponding energy lower bound and the first-order equations the model supports. We use these expressions to introduce effective Bogomol’nyi-Prasad-Sommerfeld (BPS) scenarios, solving the resulting first-order equations by means of the finite-difference scheme, this way attaining genuine field solutions engendering topological configurations. We depict the new profiles, commenting on the main properties they engender.