Alex B. Nielsen

Production and decay of evolving horizons

We consider a simple physical model for an evolving horizon that is strongly interacting with its environment, exchanging arbitrarily large quantities of matter with its environment in the form of both infalling material and outgoing Hawking radiation. We permit fluxes of both lightlike and timelike particles to cross the horizon, and ask how the horizon grows and shrinks in response to such flows. We place a premium on providing a clear and straightforward exposition with simple formulae. To be able to handle such a highly dynamical situation in a simple manner we make one significant physical restriction-that of spherical symmetry-and two technical mathematical restrictions: (1) we choose to slice the spacetime in such a way that the spacetime foliations (and hence the horizons) are always spherically symmetric. (2) Furthermore, we adopt Painleve-Gullstrand coordinates (which are well suited to the problem because they are nonsingular at the horizon) in order to simplify the relevant calculations. Of course physics results are ultimately independent of the choice of coordinates, but this particular coordinate system yields a clean physical interpretation of the relevant physics. We find particularly simple forms for surface gravity, and for the first and second law of black hole thermodynamics, in this general evolving horizon situation. Furthermore, we relate our results to Hawkings apparent horizon, Ashtekar and co-workers isolated and dynamical horizons, and Haywards trapping horizon. The evolving black hole model discussed here will be of interest, both from an astrophysical viewpoint in terms of discussing growing black holes and from a purely theoretical viewpoint in discussing black hole evaporation via Hawking radiation.

Dynamical surface gravity

We discuss how the surface gravity can be classically defined for dynamical black holes. In particular, we focus on defining the surface gravity for locally defined horizons and compare a number of definitions proposed in the literature. We illustrate the differences between the various proposals in the case of an arbitrary dynamical, spherically symmetric black hole spacetime. We also discuss how the trapping horizon formalism of Hayward can be related to other constructions.

Analysis Framework for the Prompt Discovery of Compact Binary Mergers in Gravitational-wave Data

We describe a stream-based analysis pipeline to detect gravitational waves from the merger of binary neutron stars, binary black holes, and neutron-star–black-hole binaries within ∼1 min of the arrival of the merger signal at Earth. Such low-latency detection is crucial for the prompt response by electromagnetic facilities in order to observe any fading electromagnetic counterparts that might be produced by mergers involving at least one neutron star. Even for systems expected not to produce counterparts, low-latency analysis of the data is useful for deciding when not to point telescopes, and as feedback to observatory operations. Analysts using this pipeline were the first to identify GW151226, the second gravitational-wave event ever detected. The pipeline also operates in an offline mode, in which it incorporates more refined information about data quality and employs acausal methods that are inapplicable to the online mode. The pipeline’s offline mode was used in the detection of the first two gravitational-wave events, GW150914 and GW151226, as well as the identification of a third candidate, LVT151012.

The slicing dependence of non-spherically symmetric quasi-local horizons in Vaidya Spacetimes

It is well known that quasi-local black hole horizons depend on the choice of a time coordinate in a spacetime. This has implications for notions such as the surface of the black hole and also on quasi-local physical quantities such as horizon measures of mass and angular momentum. In this paper, we compare different horizons on non-spherically symmetric slicings of Vaidya spacetimes. The spacetimes we investigate include both accreting and evaporating black holes. For some simple choices of the Vaidya mass function function corresponding to collapse of a hollow shell, we compare the area for the numerically found axisymmetric trapping horizons with the area of the spherically symmetric trapping horizon and event horizon. We find that as expected, both the location and area are dependent on the choice of foliation. However, the area variation is not large, of order

Hybrid brane worlds in the Salam-Sezgin model

0.035%

POSSIBLE POLARIZATION AND SPIN-DEPENDENT ASPECTS OF QUANTUM GRAVITY

for a slowly evolving horizon with

Skyrme black holes in the isolated horizons formalism

dot{m}=0.02

Series solutions for a static scalar potential in a Salam-Sezgin Supergravitational hybrid braneworld

. We also calculate analytically the difference in area between the spherically symmetric quasi-local horizon and event horizon for a slowly accreting black hole. We find that the difference can be many orders of magnitude larger than the Planck area for sufficiently large black holes.

Thermodynamics of multiscalar black holes

We construct a six-dimensional warped brane world compactification of the Salam-Sezgin supergravity model by generalizing an earlier hybrid Kaluza-Klein / Randall-Sundrum construction (JHEP02(2002)007). In this construction the observed universe is interpreted as a 4-brane in six dimensions, with a Kaluza-Klein spatial direction in addition to the usual three noncompact spatial dimensions. This construction is distinct from other brane world constructions in six dimensions, which introduce the universe as a 3-brane corresponding to a topological defect in six dimensions, or which require a particular configuration of matter fields on the brane. We demonstrate that the model reproduces localized gravity on the brane in the expected form of a Newtonian potential with Yukawa-type corrections. We show that allowed parameter ranges include values which potentially solve the hierarchy problem. An exact nonlinear gravitational wave solution on the background is exhibited. The class of solutions given applies to Ricci-flat geometries in four dimensions, and consequently includes brane world realizations of the Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes as particular examples. Arguments are given which suggest that the hybrid compactification of the Salam-Sezgin model can be extended to reductions to arbitrary Einstein space geometries in four dimensions.

Non-minimally coupled multi-scalar black holes

We argue that quantum gravity theories that carry a Lie-algebraic modification of the Poincare and Heisenberg algebras inevitably provide inhomogeneities that may serve as seeds for cosmological structure formation. Furthermore, in this class of theories one must expect a strong polarization and spin dependence of various quantum gravity effects.