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Gravitational Stokes parameters

The electromagnetic and gravitational Stokes parameters are defined in the general theory of relativity. The general-relativistic equation of radiative transfer for polarized radiation is then derived in terms of the Stokes parameters for both high-frequency electromagnetic and gravitational waves. The concept of Stokes parameters is generalized for the most general class of metric theories of gravity, where six (instead of two) independent states of polarization are present.

Anile, A. M.↗

Skewing the CMB×LSS: a fast method for bispectrum analysis

Upcoming cosmic microwave background (CMB) lensing measurements and tomographic galaxy surveys are expected to provide us with high-precision data sets in the coming years, thus paving the way for fruitful cross-correlation analyses. Here, in this paper we study the information content of the weighted skew-spectrum, a nearly-optimal estimator of the angular bispectrum amplitude, as a means to extract non-Gaussian information on both bias and cosmological parameters from the bispectra of galaxies cross-correlated with CMB lensing, while gaining significantly on speed. Our results show that for the combination of the Planck satellite and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), the difference in the constraints on bias and cosmological parameters from the skew-spectrum and the bispectrum is at most 17%. We further compare and find agreement between our theoretical skew-spectra and those estimated from N-body simulations, for which it is important to include gravitational non-linearities beyond perturbation theory and the post-Born effect for CMB lensing. We define an algorithm to apply the skew-spectrum estimator to the data and, as a preliminary step, we use the skew-spectra to constrain bias parameters and the amplitude of shot noise from the simulations through a Markov chain Monte Carlo likelihood analysis, finding that it may be possible to reach percent-level estimates for the linear bias parameter b 1 .

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Gravitational-wave observations as a tool for testing relativistic gravity

Approaches regarding the role of gravitational wave observations in the investigation of relativistic theories of gravity are treated as providing greater potential in the prediction of wave propagation speed and the polarization properties of gravitational waves. The invariant classes of waves discussed have the same post-Newtonian limit as general relativity for a reasonable choice of cosmological models.

Eardley, D. M.↗

Gravitational-Wave Physics and Astronomy in the 2020s and 2030s

The 100 years since the publication of Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity saw significant development of the understanding of the theory, the identification of potential astrophysical sources of sufficiently strong gravitational waves, and development of key technologies for gravitational-wave detectors. In 2015, the first gravitational wave signals were detected by the two US Advanced LIGO instruments. In 2017, Advanced LIGO and the European Advanced Virgo detectors pinpointed a binary neutron star coalescence that was also seen across the electromagnetic spectrum. The field of gravitational wave astronomy is just starting, and this Roadmap of future developments surveys the potential for growth in bandwidth and sensitivity of future gravitational-wave detectors and discusses the science results anticipated to come from upcoming instruments.

Compact astrophysical objects↗

Ocean tides for satellite geodesy

Spherical harmonic tidal solutions have been obtained at the frequencies of the 32 largest luni-solar tides using prior theory of the author. That theory was developed for turbulent, nonglobal, self-gravitating, and loading oceans possessing realistic bathymetry and linearized bottom friction; the oceans satisfy no-flow boundary conditions at coastlines. In this theory the eddy viscosity and bottom drag coefficients are treated as spatially uniform. Comparison of the predicted degree-2 components of the Mf, P1, and M2 tides with those from numerical and satellite-based tide models allows the ocean friction parameters to be estimated at long and short periods. Using the 32 tide solutions, the frequency dependence of tidal admittance is investigated, and the validity of sideband tide models used in satellite orbit analysis is examined. The implications of admittance variability for oceanic resonances are also explored.

Dickman, S. R.↗

Resonance excitation of spiral density waves in a gaseous disk. I - A linear theory

The wave propagation in a gaseous disk which is self-gravitating and viscous is studied. Waves are generated by an external disturbance and are maintained in motion among forces due to rotation, self-gravity, and pressure. A linear theory is developed for the general case in which all factors are taken into account. The general solution can be applied to the photostellar disk of the solar nebula and the circumstellar disk of a binary in which the effects of self-gravity and pressure are equally important. The theory confirms in great detail that a long wave is excited at one of the Lindblad resonances gravitationally by the external periodic potential, propagates toward the corotation, is reflected before reaching there at the Q-barrier, and finally propagates in the reverse direction toward and past the Lindblad resonance as a short wave.

Yuan, Chi↗

Electromagnetic and gravitational interactions from Lagrangian mechanics

Highlights: • Background Maxwell and Einstein fields are universal features of Lagrangian systems. • The Lagrangian function is promoted to a dynamic field. • The Einstein–Maxwell theory is derived from Lagrangian mechanics. Background fields of electromagnetic and gravitational type emerge in the low kinetic energy limit of any regular Lagrangian system and, in particular, in the corresponding limit of any spacetime theory in which the free motion of test particles is described by an unspecified regular Lagrangian. Electromagnetic and gravitational type interactions are therefore a universal feature of low kinetic energy Lagrangian systems. These background interactions can be consistently turned into dynamic Einstein–Maxwell fields by promoting the Lagrangian function to a dynamic scalar field on the tangent bundle of the configuration space. Accordingly, Einstein–Maxwell theory can be deduced from the assumption that the motion of elementary test particles in spacetime is described by Lagrangian mechanics. For higher kinetic energy-type values, identified with the square of the invariant mass of the particle, the Lagrangian induces higher rank interactions that seem however too weak to have been detected in spacetime physics, but which might prove relevant at the Planck scale.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Direct astrophysical tests of chiral effective field theory at supranuclear densities

Recent observations of neutron stars with gravitational waves and X-ray timing provide unprecedented access to the equation of state (EoS) of cold dense matter at densities difficult to realize in terrestrial experiments. At the same time, predictions for the EoS equipped with reliable uncertainty estimates from chiral effective field theory ( x EFT) allow us to bound our theoretical ignorance. In this work, we analyze astrophysical data using a nonparametric representation of the neutron-star EoS conditioned on x EFT to directly constrain the underlying physical properties of the compact objects without introducing modeling systematics. We discuss how the data alone constrain the EoS at high densities when we condition on x EFT at low densities. Here, we also demonstrate how to exploit astrophysical data to directly test the predictions of x EFT for the EoS up to twice nuclear saturation density, in order to estimate the density at which these predictions might break down. We nd that the existence of massive pulsars, gravitational waves from GW170817, and NICER observations of PSR J0030+0451 favor x EFT predictions for the EoS up to nuclear saturation density over a more agnostic analysis by as much as a factor of 7 for the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations used in this work. While x EFT predictions using QMC are fully consistent with gravitational-wave data up to twice nuclear saturation density, NICER observations suggest that the EoS stiffens relative to these predictions at or slightly above nuclear saturation density. Additionally, for these QMC calculations, we marginalize over the uncertainty in the density at which x EFT begins to break down, constraining the radius of a 1.4M $\bigodot$ neutron star to R 1.4 = $11.40^{+1.38}_{–1.04}$ ($12.54^{+0.71}_{–0.63}$) km and the pressure at twice nuclear saturation density to p(2n sat ) = $14.2^{+18.1}_{–8.4}$ ($28.7^{+15.3}_{–15.0}$) MeV=fm 3 with massive pulsar and gravitational-wave (and NICER) data.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Modification to the Hawking temperature of a dynamical black hole by a flow-induced supertranslation

One interesting proposal to solve the black hole information loss paradox without modifying either general relativity or quantum field theory, is the soft hair, a diffeomorphism charge that records the anisotropic radiation in the asymptotic region. This proposal, however, has been challenged, given that away from the source the soft hair behaves as a coordinate transformation that forms an Abelian group, thus unable to store any information. To maintain the spirit of the soft hair but circumvent these obstacles, we consider Hawking radiation as a probe sensitive to the entire history of the black hole evaporation, where the soft hairs on the horizon are induced by the absorption of a null anisotropic flow, generalizing the shock wave considered in [1, 2]. To do so we introduce two different time-dependent extensions of the diffeomorphism associated with the soft hair, where one is the backreaction of the anisotropic null flow, and the other is a coordinate transformation that produces the Unruh effect and a Doppler shift to the Hawking spectrum. Together, they form an exact BMS charge generator on the entire manifold that allows the nonperturbative analysis of the black hole horizon, whose surface gravity, i.e. the Hawking temperature, is found to be modified. The modification depends on an exponential average of the anisotropy of the null flow with a decay rate of 4M, suggesting the emergence of a new 2-D degree of freedom on the horizon, which could be a way out of the information loss paradox.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Goldstone bosons on celestial sphere and conformal soft theorems

In this paper, we study celestial amplitudes of Goldstone bosons and conformal soft theorems. Motivated by the success of soft bootstrap in momentum space and the important role of the soft limit behavior of tree-level amplitudes, our goal is to extend some of the methods to the celestial sphere. The crucial ingredient of the calculation is the Mellin transformation, which transforms four-dimensional scattering amplitudes to correlation functions of primary operators in the celestial CFT. The soft behavior of the amplitude is then translated to the singularities of the correlator. Only for amplitudes in “UV completed theories” (with sufficiently good high energy behavior) the Mellin integration can be properly performed. In all other cases, the celestial amplitude is only defined in a distributional sense with delta functions. We provide many examples of celestial amplitudes in UV-completed models, including linear sigma models and Z-theory, which is a certain completion of the SU(N) non-linear sigma model. We also comment on the BCFW-like and soft recursion relations for celestial amplitudes and the extension of soft bootstrap ideas.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Triple interference, non-linear Talbot effect and gravitization of the quantum

Recently we have discussed a new approach to the problem of quantum gravity in which the quantum mechanical structures that are traditionally fixed, such as the Fubini–Study metric in the Hilbert space of states, become dynamical and so implement the idea of gravitizing the quantum. Here, in this paper we elaborate on a specific test of this new approach to quantum gravity using triple interference in a varying gravitational field. Our discussion is driven by a profound analogy with recent triple-path interference experiments performed in the context of non-linear optics. We emphasize that the triple interference experiment in a varying gravitational field would deeply influence the present understanding of the kinematics of quantum gravity and quantum gravity phenomenology. We also discuss the non-linear Talbot effect as another striking phenomenological probe of gravitization of the geometry of quantum theory.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Gravitational wave background from mergers of large primordial black holes

The Peters formula, which tells how the coalescence time of a binary system emitting gravitational radiation is determined by the initial size and shape of the elliptic orbit, is often used in estimating the merger rate of primordial black holes and the gravitational wave background from the mergers. Valid as it is in some interesting scenarios, such as the analysis of the LIGO-Virgo events, the Peters formula fails to describe the coalescence time if the orbital period of the binary exceeds the value given by the formula. This could underestimate the event rate of mergers that occur before the cosmic time t ~ 10 13 s. As a result, the energy density spectrum of the gravitational wave background could develop a peak, which is from mergers occurring at either t ~ 10 13 s (for black holes with mass M ≳ 10 8 M ⊙ ) or t ~ 10 26 (M/M ⊙ ) -5/3 s (for 10 5 M ⊙ ≲ M ≲ 10 8 M ⊙ ). This can be used to constrain the fraction of dark matter in primordial black holes (denoted by f) if potential probes (such as SKA and U-DECIGO) do not discover such a background, with the result f ≲ 10 -6 –10 -4 for the mass range 10– 10 9 M ⊙ . Finally, we then consider the effect of mass accretion onto primordial black holes at redshift z ~ 10, and find that the merger rate could drop significantly at low redshifts. The spectrum of the gravitational wave background thus gets suppressed at the high-frequency end. This feature might be captured by future detectors such as ET and CE for initial mass M = Script $\mathcal{O}$(10–100) M ⊙ with f ≳ 10 -4 .

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Gravitational wave imprints of left-right symmetric model with minimal Higgs sector

We study the gravitational wave imprints of left-right symmetric model equipped with universal seesaw mechanism allowing for the natural generation of hierarchical masses of the Standard Model fermions. The scalar sector of this model is the minimal one, consisting of only two Higgs doublets. Following the construction of the full thermal potential for this model, we perform a scan of the entire parameter space and identify the region in which the cosmic phase transition associated with the left-right symmetry breaking gives gravitational wave signals detectable by a variety of planned space-based interferometers. Then we also discuss the relevant collider implications of this beyond the Standard Model scenario.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗