General Relativity And Quantum Cosmology

Recently, a distinct shadow mechanism was proposed by Wang et al. from the asymmetric thin-shell wormhole (ATW) in [Phys. Lett. B 811 (2020) 135930]. On the other hand, Gralla et al's work [Phys. Rev. D 100 (2019) 2, 024018] represented a nice description of photon rings in the presence of an accretion disk around a black hole. In this paper, we are inspired to thoroughly investigate the observational appearance of an accretion disk around the ATW. Although the spacetime outside an ATW with a throat could be identical to that containing a black hole with its event horizon, we show evident additional photon rings from the ATW spacetime. Moreover, a potential lensing band between two highly demagnified photon rings is found. Our analysis provides an optically observational signature to distinguish ATWs from black holes.

This paper is based on the study of the paper of Scardigli and Casadio [Eur. Phys. J. C (2015) 75:425] where the authors computed the light deflection and perihelion precession for the Generalized Uncertainty Principle (GUP) modified Schwarzschild metric. In the present work, we computed the gravitational tests such as Shapiro time delay, gravitational redshift, and geodetic precession for the GUP modified Schwarzschild metric. Using the results of Solar system experiments and observations, we obtain upper bounds for the GUP parameter β . Finally, we compare our bounds with other bounds in the literature.

Ghost-free bimetric gravity is a theory of two interacting spin-2 fields, one massless and one massive, in addition to the standard matter particles and fields, thereby generalizing Einstein's theory of general relativity. To parameterize the theory, we use five observables with specific physical interpretations. We present, for the first time, observational constraints on these parameters that: (i) apply to the full theory, (ii) are consistent with a working screening mechanism (i.e., restoring general relativity locally), (iii) exhibit a continuous, real-valued background cosmology (without the Higuchi ghost). For the cosmological constraints, we use data sets from the cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations, and type Ia supernovae. Bimetric cosmology provides a good fit to data even for large values of the mixing angle between the massless and massive gravitons. Interestingly, the best-fit model is a self-accelerating solution where the accelerated expansion is due to the dynamical massive spin-2 field, without a cosmological constant. Due to the screening mechanism, the models are consistent with local tests of gravity such as solar system tests and gravitational lensing by galaxies. We also comment on the possibility of alleviating the Hubble tension with this theory.

In a general Lorentzian manifold M, the past lightcone of a point is a proper subset of M that does not carry enough information to determine the rest of M. That said, if M is a globally hyperbolic Cauchy development of vacuum initial data on a Cauchy surface S and there is a point whose past lightcone contains S, then the contents of such a lightcone determines all of M (up to isometry). We show some results that describe what properties of M guarantee that past lightcones do indeed determine all or at least significant portions of M. Null lines and observer horizons, which are well known features of the de-Sitter spacetime, play a prominent role.

Understanding the dynamic process of black hole thermodynamic phase transitions at a triple point is a huge challenge. In this letter, we carry out the first investigation of dynamical phase behaviour at a black hole triple point. By numerically solving the Smoluchowski equation near the triple point for a six-dimensional charged Gauss-Bonnet anti-de Sitter black hole, we find that initial small, intermediate, or large black holes can transit to the other two coexistent phases at the triple point, indicating that thermodynamic phase transitions can indeed occur dynamically. More significantly, we observe characteristic weak and strong oscillatory behaviour in this dynamic process, which can be understood from an investigation of the rate of first passage from one phase to another. Our results further an understanding of the dynamic process of black hole thermodynamic phase transitions.

Two polarization modes of gravitational wave are derived from the general relativity which are plus and cross modes. However, the alternative theories of gravity can yield the gravitational wave with up to six polarizations. Searching for the polarizations beyond plus and cross is an important test of general relativity. In principle, one space-borne detector, like LISA, could measure the gravitational wave polarizations from a long time observation with its orbital motion. With the comparable sensitivities, the joint LISA and TAIJI missions will improve the observations on the polarization predictions of theories beyond general relativity. In this work, a class of parameterized post-Einsteinian waveform is employed to describe the alternative polarizations, and six parameterized post-Einsteinian parameters quantifying from general relativity waveform are examined by using the LISA-TAIJI network. Our results show that the measurements on amplitudes of alternative polarizations from joint LISA-TAIJI observation could be improved by more than 10 times compared to LISA single mission in an optimal scenario.

Recently there has been a surge of interest in studying Lorentzian quantum cosmology using Picard-Lefschetz methods. The present paper aims to explore the Lorentzian path-integral of Gauss-Bonnet gravity in four spacetime dimensions with metric as the field variable. We employ mini-superspace approximation and study the variational problem exploring different boundary conditions. It is seen that for mixed boundary conditions non-trivial effects arise from Gauss-Bonnet sector of gravity leading to additional saddle points for lapse in some case. As an application of this we consider the No-boundary proposal of the Universe with two different settings of boundary conditions, and compute the transition amplitude using Picard-Lefschetz formalism. In first case the transition amplitude is a superposition of a Lorentzian and a Euclidean geometrical configuration leading to interference incorporating non-perturbative effects coming from Gauss-Bonnet sector of gravity. In the second case involving complex initial momentum we note that the transition amplitude is an analogue of Hartle-Hawking wave-function with non-perturbative correction coming from Gauss-Bonnet sector of gravity.

The thermodynamical study of the universe allow particle production in modified f(T) ( T is the torsion scalar) theory of gravity within a flat FLRW framework for line element. The torsion scalar T plays the same role as the Ricci scalar R in the modified theories of gravity. We derived the f(T) gravity models by taking f(T) as the sum of T and an arbitrary function of T with three different arbitrary function. We observe that the particle production describes the accelerated expansion of the universe without a cosmological constant or any unknown "quintessence" component. Also, we discussed the supplementary pressure, particle number density and particle production rate for three cases.

We study analytic solutions of scalar field bounces near the false vacuum. We extend our previous work on massless or light fields to include massive scalar fields, scalar field theories with time-dependent couplings, and higher-order kinetic terms, as they may have important physical implications. We consider also such theories in space dimensions other than three. We include Einstein-Hilbert gravity when the false vacuum has a flat geometry. Finally, we improve our numerical method, which now is based on maximization, to find the bounce.

The Kerr metric is considered in a synchronous frame of reference obtained by using proper time and initial conditions for particles that freely move along a certain set of trajectories as coordinates. Modifying these coordinates in a certain way (keeping their interpretation as initial values at large distances), we still have a synchronous frame and the direct analogue of the Lemaitre metric, the singularities of which are exhausted by the physical Kerr singularity (the singularity ring).