Astrophysical black holes do not exist in a vacuum, and their motion is affected by the galactic environment. As a black hole moves it attracts stars and matter, creating a wake that, in turn, exerts an effective friction slowing down the black hole. This force is known as dynamical friction and has significant consequences, ranging from the formation of supermassive black hole binaries to modifications in the phase of binary mergers. In this work we explore the motion of spinning black holes on a medium. We find that the classical “drag” along the velocity direction is modified and two novel forces appear: a rotational force, which in the context of fluid dynamics is dubbed the Magnus force, and a lift, orthogonal to the direction of motion. We develop a first-principles fully relativistic treatment of these spin-induced aerodynamic forces in two types of environment: (i) collisionless corpuscular matter and (ii) a light scalar field, exploring the differences between both cases. In both cases we find that the total rotational force acts precisely in the opposite direction as compared to the classical setup of a spinning ball moving through a fluid. Finally, we comment on the consequences of these new effects for astrophysics and gravitational wave observations.

We use the distribution formalism to derive the complete set of junction conditions for general local rotationally symmetric (LRS) spacetimes in the $1+1+2$ covariant formalism. We start by developing a parametric framework encompassing timelike, spacelike, or null hypersurfaces. We then introduce the distribution formalism in the $1+1+2$ framework and obtain the necessary conditions to preserve the regularity of the $1+1+2$ equations at the separation hypersurface. Using these results, we can deduce some general prescriptions on the junction of LRS spacetimes and the properties of the shell in the nonsmooth cases. As examples of the application of the junction conditions, we use this formalism to perform the matching necessary to obtain well-known solutions, e.g., the Martinez thin shell, the Schwarzschild constant-density fluid star, and the Oppenheimer-Snyder collapse.

Gravitational wave observations of binary black hole mergers probe their astrophysical origins via the binary spin, namely the spin magnitudes and directions of each component black hole, together described by six degrees of freedom. However, the emitted signals primarily depend on two effective spin parameters that condense the spin degrees of freedom to those parallel and those perpendicular to the orbital plane. Given this reduction in dimensionality between the physically relevant problem and what is typically measurable, we revisit the question of whether information about the component spin magnitudes and directions can successfully be recovered via gravitational-wave observations, or if we simply extrapolate information about the distributions of effective spin parameters. To this end, we simulate three astrophysical populations with the same underlying effective-spin distribution but different spin magnitude and tilt distributions, on which we conduct full individual-event and population-level parameter estimation. We find that parametrized population models can indeed qualitatively distinguish between populations with different spin magnitude and tilt distributions at current sensitivity. However, it remains challenging to either accurately recover the true distribution or to diagnose biases due to model misspecification. We attribute the former to practical challenges of dealing with high-dimensional posterior distributions, and the latter to the fact that each individual event carries very little information about the full six spin degrees of freedom.

The class of Galileon scalar fields theories encapsulate the Vainshtein screening mechanism, which is characteristic of a large range of infrared modified theories of gravity. Such theories can lead to testable departures from general relativity through fifth forces and new scalar modes of gravitational radiation. However, the inherent nonlinearity of the Vainshtein mechanism has limited analytic attempts to describe Galileon theories with both cubic and quartic interactions. To improve on this, we perform direct numerical simulations of the quartic Galileon model for a rotating binary source and infer the power spectrum of given multipoles. To tame numerical instabilities we utilize a low-pass filter, extending previous work on the cubic Galileon. Our findings show that the multipole expansion is well defined and under control. Moreover, our results confirm that despite being a nonlinear scalar, the dominant Galileon radiation is quadrupole, and we find a new scaling behavior deep inside the Vainshtein region.

In this work, we propose extremal black holes (BH) as critical points of a new class of gravitational collapses. The conjecture is made by observing the continuous self-similarity (CSS) and discrete self-similarity (DSS) behaviors of perturbations of an extremal black hole spacetime and compare them to similar properties of Choptuik-type critical solutions. By performing analytical perturbation studies on extremal black holes, we explicitly show that the DSS solution found here can be interpreted as renormalization group (RG) limit cycles, and the transition between CSS and DSS regimes occurs as the stable and unstable fixed points collide and move to the complex plane. We argue that the DSS solutions found in spherically symmetric gravitational collapses can be similarly interpreted. We identify various phenomena in nongravitational systems with RG limit cycles, including DSS correlation function, DSS scaling laws in correlation length, and order parameters, which are observed in gravitational critical collapses. We also discuss a version of gravitational Efimov effect.

In this work, we explore the properties and shadows of spin-induced scalarized black holes, as well as investigate how a Ricci coupling influences them. Our findings reveal significant deviations from the Kerr metric in terms of the location and geodesic frequencies of the innermost stable circular orbit and light ring, with the former exhibiting more pronounced disparities. The shadows of scalarized black holes exhibit relatively minor deviations when compared to those of Kerr black holes with the same mass and spin. Overall, the presence of a Ricci coupling is observed to mitigate deviations from the Kerr metric.

Within the framework of general relativity, we explore the interior of the Schwarzschild black hole before complete collapse occurs, finding that the exterior is perfectly compatible with a source much more complex than a pointlike mass. We provide a set of inner geometries for singular and regular black holes that smoothly joint the Schwarzschild exterior at the horizon $r=h=2\mathcal{M}$, and which can therefore be regarded as suitable initial conditions for collapse. In particular, the regular solutions might be an alternative to the Schwarzschild black hole as the final stage of gravitational collapse, and thus useful to study the validity of general relativity in environments of high curvature.

The detection of gravitational waves resulting from the coalescence of binary black holes by the LIGO-Virgo-Kagra Collaboration has inaugurated a new era in gravitational physics. These gravitational waves provide a unique opportunity to test Einstein’s general relativity and its modifications in the regime of extreme gravity. A significant aspect of such tests involves the study of the ringdown phase of gravitational waves from binary black hole coalescence, which can be decomposed into a superposition of various quasinormal modes. In general relativity, the spectra of quasinormal modes depend on the mass, spin, and charge of the final black hole, but they can also be influenced by additional properties of the black hole spacetime, as well as corrections to the general theory of relativity. In this work, we focus on a specific modified theory known as dynamical Chern-Simons gravity. We employ the modified Teukolsky formalism developed in a previous study and lay down the foundations to investigate perturbations of slowly rotating black holes admitted by the theory. Specifically, we derive the master equations for the ${\mathrm{\Psi }}_0$ and ${\mathrm{\Psi }}_4$ Weyl scalar perturbations that characterize the radiative part of gravitational perturbations, as well as the master equation for the scalar field perturbations. We employ metric reconstruction techniques to obtain explicit expressions for all relevant quantities. Finally, by leveraging the properties of spin-weighted spheroidal harmonics to eliminate the angular dependence from the evolution equations, we derive two, radial, second-order, ordinary differential equations for ${\mathrm{\Psi }}_0$ and ${\mathrm{\Psi }}_4$, respectively. These two equations are coupled to another radial, second-order, ordinary differential equation for the scalar field perturbations. This work is the first attempt to derive a master equation for black holes in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity using curvature perturbations. The master equations we obtain can then be numerically integrated to obtain the quasinormal mode spectrum of slowly rotating black holes in this theory, making progress in the study of ringdown in dynamical Chern-Simons gravity.

General relativity, though the most successful theory of gravity, has been continuously modified to resolve its incompatibility with quantum mechanics and explain the origin of dark energy or dark matter. One way to test these modified gravity theories is to study the gravitational waves emitted during the ringdown of binary mergers, which consist of quasinormal modes. In several modified gravity theories, the even- and odd-parity gravitational perturbations of nonrotating and slowly rotating black holes have different quasinormal mode frequencies, breaking the isospectrality of general relativity. For black holes with arbitrary spin in modified gravity, there were no avenues to compute quasinormal modes except numerical relativity, until recent extensions of the Teukolsky formalism. In this work, we describe how to use the modified Teukolsky formalism to study isospectrality breaking in modified gravity. We first introduce how definite-parity modes are defined through combinations of Weyl scalars in general relativity, and then, we extend this definition to modified gravity. We then use the eigenvalue perturbation method to show how the degeneracy in quasinormal mode frequencies of different parity is broken in modified gravity. To demonstrate our analysis, we also apply it to some specific modified gravity theories. Our work lays the foundation for studying isospectrality breaking of quasinormal modes in modified gravity for black holes with arbitrary spin.

We investigate a cosmological model in which a fraction of the dark matter is atomic dark matter (ADM). This ADM consists of dark versions of the electron and of the proton, interacting with each other and with dark photons just as their light sector versions do, but interacting with everything else only gravitationally. We find constraints given current cosmic microwave background (CMB) and baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data, with and without an $H_0$ prior, and with and without enforcing a big bang nucleosynthesis consistent helium abundance. We find that, at low dark photon temperature, one can have consistency with BAO and CMB data, with a fraction of dark matter that is ADM ($f_{\mathrm{adm}}$) as large as $\sim 0.1$. Such a large $f_{\mathrm{adm}}$ leads to a suppression of density fluctuations today on scales below about 60 Mpc that may be of relevance to the ${\sigma }_8$ tension. Our work motivates calculation of nonlinear corrections to matter power spectrum predictions in the ADM model. We forecast parameter constraints to come from future ground-based CMB surveys, and find that if ADM is indeed the cause of the ${\sigma }_8$ tension, the influence of the ADM, primarily on CMB lensing, will likely be detectable at high significance.

We examine the second law of thermodynamics in the context of horizon cosmology, in particular, whether the change of total entropy (i.e., the sum of the entropy for the apparent horizon and the entropy for the matter fields) proves to be positive with the cosmic expansion of the universe. The matter fields inside the horizon obey the thermodynamics of an open system as the matter fields have a flux through the apparent horizon, which is either outward or inward depending on the background cosmological dynamics. Regarding the entropy of the apparent horizon, we consider different forms of the horizon entropy like the Tsallis entropy, the Rényi entropy, the Kaniadakis entropy, or even the four-parameter generalized entropy; and determine the appropriate conditions on the respective entropic parameters coming from the second law of horizon thermodynamics. The constraints on the entropic parameters are found in such a way that it validates the second law of thermodynamics during a wide range of cosmic eras of the universe, particularly from inflation to radiation dominated epoch followed by a reheating stage. Importantly, the present work provides a model independent way to constrain the entropic parameters directly from the second law of thermodynamics for the apparent horizon.

The subsolar mass primordial black hole (PBH) attracts attention as robust evidence of its primordial origin against the astrophysical black hole. Not only with themselves, PBHs can also form binaries with ordinary astrophysical objects, catching them by gravitational wave (GW) bremsstrahlung. We discuss the detectability of the inspiral GWs from binaries consisting of a PBH and a white dwarf (WD) by using space-borne gravitational wave interferometers like DECIGO. The conservative assessment shows the expected event number in three years by DECIGO is $\mathcal{O}({10}^{-6})$ for $M_{\mathrm{PBH}}\sim 0.1M_{\odot }$. Possible enhancement mechanisms of WD-PBH binary formation may amplify this event rate. We discuss how large enhancement associated with WDs is required to detect WD-PBH merger events without violating the existing constraints on the PBH-PBH merger by the ground-based detector.

In this work we present general predictions for the static observables of neutron stars (NSs) under the hypothesis of a purely nucleonic composition of the ultradense baryonic matter, using Bayesian inference on a very large parameter space conditioned by both astrophysical and nuclear physics constraints. The equations of state are obtained using a unified approach of the NS core and inner crust within a fully covariant treatment based on a relativistic mean-field Lagrangian density with density-dependent couplings. The posterior distributions are well compatible with the ones obtained by semiagnostic metamodeling techniques based on nonrelativistic functionals that span a similar portion of the parameter space in terms of nuclear matter parameters, and we confirm that the hypothesis of a purely nucleonic composition is compatible with all the present observations. We additionally show that present observations do not exclude the existence of very massive neutron stars with mass compatible with the lighter partner of the gravitational event GW190814 measured by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration. Some selected representative models, that respect well all the constraints taken into account in this study and approximately cover the residual uncertainty in our posterior distributions, will be uploaded in the compose database for use by the community.

Self-lensing flares (SLFs) are expected to be produced once or twice per orbit by an accreting massive black hole binary (MBHB), if the eclipsing MBHBs are observed close to edge-on. SLFs can provide valuable electromagnetic (EM) signatures to accompany the gravitational waves (GWs) detectable by the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). EM follow-ups are crucial for, e.g., sky-localization, and constraining the Hubble constant and the graviton mass. We use high-resolution two-dimensional viscous hydrodynamical simulations of a circumbinary disk (CBD) embedding a MBHB. We then use very high-cadence output of these hydrodynamical simulation inputs for a general-relativistic ray-tracing code to produce synthetic spectra and phase-folded light curves. Our main results show a significant periodic amplification of the flux with the characteristic shape of a sharp flare with a central dip, as the foreground black hole (BH) transits across the minidisk and shadow of the background BH, respectively. These corroborate previous conclusions based on the microlensing approximation and analytical toy models of the emission geometry. We also find that at lower inclinations, without some occlusion of the minidisk emission by the CBD, shocks from quasiperiodic mass-trading between the minidisks can produce bright flares which can mimic SLFs and could hinder their identification.

We demonstrate the suppression of parametric instability in an 80-meter-long Fabry-Perot cavity through optical actuation in an electro-optical feedback loop. The suppression of the high-order mode is achieved by injecting a high-order mode with the same frequency and opposite phase. The beat note signal between the fundamental and high-order mode in the transmission of the cavity is filtered, amplified, and applied to an electro-optical modulator to create a sideband at the high-order mode frequency. Misalignment of the injection couples a small part of this sideband to the high-order mode of the cavity. The paper presents a theoretical analysis and an experimental demonstration of parametric instability suppression for an instability that would normally ring up with a parametric gain of approximately 2.5.

Relying on the polynomiality property of generalized parton distributions, which roots on Lorentz covariance, we prove that it is enough to know them at vanishing and low skewness within the Dokshitzer-Gribov-Lipatov-Altarelli-Parisi region to obtain a unique extension to their entire support up to a D term. We put this idea in practice using two methods: reconstruction using artificial neural networks and finite-elements methods. We benchmark our results against standard models for generalized parton distributions. In agreement with the formal expectation, we obtain very a accurate reconstruction for a maximal value of the skewness as low as 20% of the longitudinal momentum fraction. This result might be relevant for reconstruction of generalized parton distribution from experimental and lattice QCD data, where computations are, for now, restricted in skewness.

The strongly coupled system like the quark-hadron transition (if it is of first order) is becoming an active play yard for the physics of cosmological first-order phase transitions. However, the traditional field theoretic approach to strongly coupled first-order phase transitions is of great challenge, driving recent efforts from holographic dual theories with explicit numerical simulations. These holographic numerical simulations have revealed an intriguing linear correlation between the phase pressure difference (pressure difference away from the wall) to the nonrelativistic terminal velocity of an expanding planar wall, which has been reproduced analytically alongside both cylindrical and spherical walls from perfect-fluid hydrodynamics in our previous study but only for a bag equation of state. We also found, in our previous study, a universal quadratic correlation between the wall pressure difference (pressure difference near the bubble wall) to the nonrelativistic terminal wall velocity regardless of wall geometries. In this paper, we will generalize these analytic relations between the phase/wall pressure difference and terminal wall velocity into a more realistic equation of state beyond the simple bag model, providing the most general predictions so far for future tests from holographic numerical simulations of strongly coupled first-order phase transitions.

We calculate all transport coefficients of second-order transient hydrodynamics in two effective kinetic theory models: a hadron-resonance gas and a quasiparticle model with thermal masses tuned to reproduce quantum chromodynamics thermodynamics. We compare the corresponding results with calculations for an ultrarelativistic single-component gas, that are widely employed in hydrodynamic simulations of heavy ion collisions. We find that both of these effective models display a qualitatively different normalized bulk viscosity, when compared to the calculation for the single-component gas. Indeed, $\zeta /[{\tau }_{\mathrm{\Pi }}({ϵ}_0+P_0)]\simeq 16.91(1/3-c_s^2{)}^2$, for the hadron-resonance gas model, and $\zeta /[{\tau }_{\mathrm{\Pi }}({ϵ}_0+P_0)]\simeq 5(1/3-c_s^2)$ for the quasiparticle model. Differences are also observed for many second-order transport coefficients, specially those related to the bulk viscous pressure. The transport coefficients derived are shown to be consistent with fundamental linear stability and causality conditions.

We compute a nonperturbative effective potential between two static fermions in light-front Yukawa theory as a Hamiltonian eigenvalue problem. Fermion pair production is suppressed, to make possible an exact analytic solution in the form of a coherent state of bosons that form clouds around the sources. The effective potential is essentially an interference term between individual clouds. The model is regulated with Pauli-Villars bosons and fermions, to achieve consistent quantization and renormalization of masses and couplings. This extends earlier work on scalar Yukawa theory where Pauli-Villars regularization did not play a central role. The key result is that the nonperturbative solution restores rotational symmetry even though the light-front formulation of Yukawa theory, with its preferred axis, appears antithetical to such a symmetry.

We put forward a concrete experimental setup allowing to measure light-by-light scattering in the collision of two optical high-intensity laser beams at state-of-the-art high-field facilities operating petawatt class laser systems. Our setup uses the same focusing optics for both laser beams to be collided and employs a dark-field approach for the detection of the single-photon-level nonlinear quantum vacuum response in the presence of a large background. Based on an advanced modeling of the colliding laser fields, we in particular provide reliable estimates for the prospective numbers of signal photons scattered into the dark field for various laser polarizations.