No Arabic abstract
We describe and present the first observational evidence that light propagating near a rotating black hole is twisted in phase and carries orbital angular momentum. The novel use of this physical observable as an additional tool for the previously known techniques of gravitational lensing allows us to directly measure, for the first time, the spin parameter of a black hole. With the additional information encoded in the orbital angular momentum, not only can we reveal the actual rotation of the compact object, but we can also use rotating black holes as probes to test General Relativity.
We produce the first astrophysically-relevant numerical binary black hole gravitational waveform in a higher-curvature theory of gravity beyond general relativity. We simulate a system with parameters consistent with GW150914, the first LIGO detection, in order-reduced dynamical Chern-Simons gravity, a theory with motivations in string theory and loop quantum gravity. We present results for the leading-order corrections to the merger and ringdown waveforms, as well as the ringdown quasi-normal mode spectrum. We estimate that such corrections may be discriminated in detections with signal to noise ratio $gtrsim 180-240$, with the precise value depending on the dimension of the GR waveform family used in data analysis.
The recent detections of gravitational waves from binary systems of black holes are in remarkable agreement with the predictions of General Relativity. In this pedagogical mini-review, I will go through the physics of the different phases of the evolution of black hole binary systems, providing a qualitative physical interpretation of each one of them. I will also briefly describe how these phases would be modified if gravitation were described by a theory extending or deforming General Relativity, or if the binary components turned out to be more exotic compact objects than black holes.
We present SphericalNR, a new framework for the publicly available Einstein Toolkit that numerically solves the Einstein field equations coupled to the equations of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) in a 3+1 split of spacetime in spherical coordinates without symmetry assumptions. The spacetime evolution is performed using reference-metr
It has been demonstrated that a modern stage of the Universe expansion may be described in accordance with the observations within the scope of the space-time conformal geometry. The clock synchronization procedure in SR has been generalized to the case of the expanding space. It has been found that a universal local manifestation of the cosmological expansion is a background acceleration, the value of which is determined by Hubble constant. The formulae defining an explicit red-shift dependence of the cosmological distance and expressions for Hubble law have been obtained in a pure kinematic way from the conformal group transformation, providing a quantitative representation of the Pioneer anomaly and of the effect associated with the experimentally revealed Metagalaxy transition to its accelerated expansion
At the 20-th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics there was a plenary talk devoted to the recent developments in classical Relativity. In that talk the problems of gravitational collapse, collisions of black holes, and of black holes as celestial bodies were discussed. But probably the problems of the internal structure of black holes are a real great challenge. In my talk I want to outline the recent achievements in our understanding of the nature of the singularity (and beyond!) inside a realistic rotating black hole. This presentation also addresses the following questions: Can we see what happens inside a black hole? Can a falling observer cross the singularity without being crushed? An answer to these questions is probably yes.