Leonardo Gualtieri

Testing general relativity with present and future astrophysical observations

One century after its formulation, Einsteins general relativity (GR) has made remarkable predictions and turned out to be compatible with all experimental tests. Most of these tests probe the theory in the weak-field regime, and there are theoretical and experimental reasons to believe that GR should be modified when gravitational fields are strong and spacetime curvature is large. The best astrophysical laboratories to probe strong-field gravity are black holes and neutron stars, whether isolated or in binary systems. We review the motivations to consider extensions of GR. We present a (necessarily incomplete) catalog of modified theories of gravity for which strong-field predictions have been computed and contrasted to Einsteins theory, and we summarize our current understanding of the structure and dynamics of compact objects in these theories. We discuss current bounds on modified gravity from binary pulsar and cosmological observations, and we highlight the potential of future gravitational wave measurements to inform us on the behavior of gravity in the strong-field regime.

Hawking emission of gravitons in higher dimensions: non-rotating black holes

We compute the absorption cross section and the total power carried by gravitons in the evaporation process of a higher-dimensional non-rotating black hole. These results are applied to a model of extra dimensions with standard model fields propagating on a brane. The emission of gravitons in the bulk is highly enhanced as the spacetime dimensionality increases. The implications for the detection of black holes in particle colliders and ultrahigh-energy cosmic ray air showers are briefly discussed.

Relativistic models of magnetars: the twisted-torus magnetic field configuration

We find general relativistic solutions of equilibrium magnetic field configurations in magnetars, extending previous results of Colaiuda et al. Our method is based on the solution of the relativistic Grad-Shafranov equation, to which Maxwells equations can be reduced. We obtain equilibrium solutions with the toroidal magnetic field component confined into a finite region inside the star, and the poloidal component extending to the exterior. These so-called twisted torus configurations have been found to be the final outcome of dynamical simulations in the framework of Newtonian gravity, and appear to be more stable than other configurations. The solutions include higher-order multipoles, which are coupled to the dominant dipolar field. We use arguments of minimal energy to constrain the ratio of the toroidal to the poloidal field.

Black-hole bombs and photon-mass bounds.

Generic extensions of the standard model predict the existence of ultralight bosonic degrees of freedom. Several ongoing experiments are aimed at detecting these particles or constraining their mass range. Here we show that massive vector fields around rotating black holes can give rise to a strong superradiant instability, which extracts angular momentum from the hole. The observation of supermassive spinning black holes imposes limits on this mechanism. We show that current supermassive black-hole spin estimates provide the tightest upper limits on the mass of the photon (m(v) is < or approximately equal to 4×10(-20) eV according to our most conservative estimate), and that spin measurements for the largest known supermassive black holes could further lower this bound to m(v) < or approximately equal to 10(-22) eV. Our analysis relies on a novel framework to study perturbations of rotating Kerr black holes in the slow-rotation regime, that we developed up to second order in rotation, and that can be extended to other spacetime metrics and other theories.

Black Hole Particle Emission in Higher-Dimensional Spacetimes

In models with extra dimensions, a black hole evaporates both in the bulk and on the visible brane, where standard model fields live. The exact emissivities of each particle species are needed to determine how the black hole decay proceeds. We compute and discuss the absorption cross sections, the relative emissivities, and the total power output of all known fields in the evaporation phase. Graviton emissivity is highly enhanced as the spacetime dimensionality increases. Therefore, a black hole loses a significant fraction of its mass in the bulk. This result has important consequences for the phenomenology of black holes in models with extra dimensions and black hole detection in particle colliders.

Relativistic models of magnetars: structure and deformations

We find numerical solutions of the coupled system of Einstein-Maxwell equations with a linear approach, in which the magnetic field acts as a perturbation of a spherical neutron star. In our study, magnetic fields having both poloidal and toroidal components are considered, and higher order multipoles are also included. We evaluate the deformations induced by different field configurations, paying special attention to those for which the star has a prolate shape. We also explore the dependence of the stellar deformation on the particular choice of the equation of state and on the mass of the star. Our results show that, for neutron stars with mass M = 1.4 M ⊙ and surface magnetic fields of the order of 10 15 G, a quadrupole ellipticity of the order of 10 -6 to 10 -5 should be expected. Low-mass neutron stars are in principle subject to larger deformations (quadrupole ellipticities up to 10 -3 in the most extreme case). The effect of quadrupolar magnetic fields is comparable to that of dipolar components. A magnetic field permeating the whole star is normally needed to obtain negative quadrupole ellipticities, while fields confined to the crust typically produce positive quadrupole ellipticities.

Gravitational energy loss in high-energy particle collisions: Ultrarelativistic plunge into a multidimensional black hole

We investigate the gravitational energy emission of an ultrarelativistic particle radially falling into a D-dimensional black hole. We numerically integrate the equations describing black hole gravitational perturbations and obtain energy spectra, total energy and angular distribution of the emitted gravitational radiation. The black hole quasinormal modes for scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations are computed in the WKB approximation. We discuss our results in the context of black hole production at the TeV scale.

Gravitational wave asteroseismology reexamined

The frequencies and damping times of the non radial oscillations of non rotating neutron stars are computed for a set of recently proposed equations of state (EOS) which describe matter at supranuclear densities. These EOS are obtained within two different approaches, the nonrelativistic nuclear many-body theory and the relativistic mean field theory, that model hadronic interactions in different ways leading to different composition and dynamics. Being the non radial oscillations associated to the emission of gravitational waves, we fit the eigenfrequencies of the fundamental mode and of the first pressure and gravitational-wave mode (polar and axial) with appropriate functions of the mass and radius of the star, comparing the fits, when available, with those obtained by Andersson and Kokkotas in 1998. We show that the identification in the spectrum of a detected gravitational signal of a sharp pulse corresponding to the excitation of the fundamental mode or of the first p-mode, combined with the knowledge of the mass of the star - the only observable on which we may have reliable information - would allow to gain interesting information on the composition of the inner core. We further discuss the detectability of these signals by gravitational detectors.

Structure and deformations of strongly magnetized neutron stars with twisted-torus configurations

We construct general relativistic models of stationary, strongly magnetized neutron stars. The magnetic field configuration, obtained by solving the relativistic GradShafranov equation, is a generalization of the twisted torus model recently proposed in the literature; the stellar deformations induced by the magnetic field are computed by solving the perturbed Einstein’s equations; stellar matter is modeled using realistic equations of state. We find that in these configurations the poloidal field dominates over the toroidal field and that, if the magnetic field is sufficiently strong during the first phases of the stellar life, it can produce large deformations.

Quasi-normal modes and gravitational wave astronomy

We review the main results obtained in the literature on quasi-normal modes (QNM) of compact stars and black holes, in the light of recent exciting developments of gravitational wave (GW) detectors. QNMs are a fundamental feature of the gravitational signal emitted by compact objects in many astrophysical processes; we will show that their eigenfrequencies encode interesting information on the nature and on the inner structure of the emitting source and we will discuss whether we are ready for a GW asteroseismology.