No Arabic abstract
The metrics of general relativity generally fall into two categories: Those which are solutions of the Einstein equations for a given source energy-momentum tensor, and the reverse engineered metrics -- metrics bespoke for a certain purpose. Their energy-momentum tensors are then calculated by inserting these into the Einstein equations. This latter approach has found frequent use when confronted with creative input from fiction, wormholes and warp drives being the most famous examples. In this paper, we shall again take inspiration from fiction, and see what general relativity can tell us about the possibility of a gravitationally induced tractor beam. We will base our construction on warp drives and show how versatile this ansatz alone proves to be. Not only can we easily find tractor beams (attracting objects); repulsor/pressor beams are just as attainable, and a generalization to stressor beams is seen to present itself quite naturally. We show that all of these metrics would violate various energy conditions. This will provide an opportunity to ruminate on the meaning of energy conditions as such, and what we can learn about whether an arbitrarily advanced civilization might have access to such beams.
Electron accelerations of the order of $10^{21} g$ obtained by laser fields open up the possibility of experimentally testing one of the cornerstones of general relativity, the weak equivalence principle, which states that the local effects of a gravitational field are indistinguishable from those sensed by a properly accelerated observer in flat space-time. We illustrate how this can be done by solving the Einstein equations in vacuum and integrating the geodesic equations of motion for a uniformly accelerated particle.
We apply the analogy between gravitational fields and optical media in the general relativistic geometric optics framework to describe how light can acquire orbital angular momentum (OAM) when it traverses the gravitational field of a massive rotating compact object and the interplay between OAM and polarization. Kerr spacetimes are known not only to impose a gravitational Faraday rotation on the polarization of a light beam, but also to set a characteristic fingerprint in the orbital angular momentum distribution of the radiation passing nearby a rotating black hole (BH). Kerr spacetime behaves like an inhomogeneous and anisotropic medium, in which light can acquire orbital angular momentum and spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion can occur, acting as a polarization and phase changing medium for the gravitationally lensed light, as confirmed by the data analysis of M87* black hole.
We report the results of a recent search for the lowest value of thermal noise that can be achieved in LIGO by changing the shape of mirrors, while fixing the mirror radius and maintaining a low diffractional loss. The result of this minimization is a beam with thermal noise a factor of 2.32 (in power) lower than previously considered Mesa Beams and a factor of 5.45 (in power) lower than the Gaussian beams employed in the current baseline design. Mirrors that confine these beams have been found to be roughly conical in shape, with an average slope approximately equal to the mirror radius divided by arm length, and with mild corrections varying at the Fresnel scale. Such a mirror system, if built, would impact the sensitivity of LIGO, increasing the event rate of observing gravitational waves in the frequency range of maximum sensitivity roughly by a factor of three compared to an Advanced LIGO using Mesa beams (assuming all other noises remain unchanged). We discuss the resulting beam and mirror properties and study requirements on mirror tilt, displacement and figure error, in order for this beam to be used in LIGO detectors.
Gaussian beams are asymptotically valid high frequency solutions concentrated on a single curve through the physical domain, and superposition of Gaussian beams provides a powerful tool to generate more general high frequency solutions to PDEs. We present a superposition of Gaussian beams over an arbitrary bounded set of dimension $m$ in phase space, and show that the tools recently developed in [ H. Liu, O. Runborg, and N. M. Tanushev, Math. Comp., 82: 919--952, 2013] can be applied to obtain the propagation error of order $k^{1- frac{N}{2}- frac{d-m}{4}}$, where $N$ is the order of beams and $d$ is the spatial dimension. Moreover, we study the sharpness of this estimate in examples.
ILC detectors are required to have unprecedented precision. Achieving this requires significant investment for test beam activities to complete the detector R&D needed, to test prototypes and (later) to qualify final detector system designs, including integrated system test. This document summarizes the discussion at this workshop on the test beam facilities and detector R&D programs to be performed there.