No Arabic abstract
We investigate Euclidean wormholes in Gauss-Bonnet-dilaton gravity to explain the creation of the universe from nothing. We considered two types of dilaton couplings (i.e., the string-inspired model and the Gaussian model) and we obtained qualitatively similar results. There can exist Euclidean wormholes that explain the possible origin of our universe, where the dilaton field is located over the barrier of dilaton potential. This solution can exist even if dilaton potential does not satisfy slow-roll conditions. In addition, the probability is higher than that of the Hawking-Moss instanton with the same final condition. Therefore, Euclidean wormholes in Gauss-Bonnet-dilaton gravity are a possible and probable scenario, which explains the origin of our universe.
We report on a numerical investigation of the stability of scalarized black holes in Einstein dilaton Gauss-Bonnet (EdGB) gravity in the full dynamical theory, though restricted to spherical symmetry. We find evidence that for sufficiently small curvature-couplings the resulting scalarized black hole solutions are nonlinearly stable. For such small couplings, we show that an elliptic region forms inside these EdGB black hole spacetimes (prior to any curvature singularity), and give evidence that this region remains censored from asymptotic view. However, for coupling values superextremal relative to a given black hole mass, an elliptic region forms exterior to the horizon, implying the exterior Cauchy problem is ill-posed in this regime.
In order to perform model-dependent tests of general relativity with gravitational wave observations, we must have access to numerical relativity binary black hole waveforms in theories beyond general relativity (GR). In this study, we focus on order-reduced Einstein dilaton Gauss-Bonnet gravity (EDGB), a higher curvature beyond-GR theory with motivations in string theory. The stability of single, rotating black holes in EDGB is unknown, but is a necessary condition for being able to simulate binary black hole systems (especially the early-inspiral and late ringdown stages) in EDGB. We thus investigate the stability of rotating black holes in order-reduced EDGB. We evolve the leading-order EDGB scalar field and EDGB spacetime metric deformation on a rotating black hole background, for a variety of spins. We find that the EDGB metric deformation exhibits linear growth, but that this level of growth exponentially converges to zero with numerical resolution. Thus, we conclude that rotating black holes in EDGB are numerically stable to leading-order, thus satisfying our necessary condition for performing binary black hole simulations in EDGB.
We present results from a numerical study of spherical gravitational collapse in shift symmetric Einstein dilaton Gauss-Bonnet (EdGB) gravity. This modified gravity theory has a single coupling parameter that when zero reduces to general relativity (GR) minimally coupled to a massless scalar field. We first show results from the weak EdGB coupling limit, where we obtain solutions that smoothly approach those of the Einstein-Klein-Gordon system of GR. Here, in the strong field case, though our code does not utilize horizon penetrating coordinates, we nevertheless find tentative evidence that approaching black hole formation the EdGB modifications cause the growth of scalar field hair, consistent with known static black hole solutions in EdGB gravity. For the strong EdGB coupling regime, in a companion paper we first showed results that even in the weak field (i.e. far from black hole formation), the EdGB equations are of mixed type: evolution of the initially hyperbolic system of partial differential equations lead to formation of a region where their character changes to elliptic. Here, we present more details about this regime. In particular, we show that an effective energy density based on the Misner-Sharp mass is negative near these elliptic regions, and similarly the null convergence condition is violated then.
We develop a theoretical framework to study slowly rotating compact stars in a rather general class of alternative theories of gravity, with the ultimate goal of investigating constraints on alternative theories from electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observations of compact stars. Our Lagrangian includes as special cases scalar-tensor theories (and indirectly f(R) theories) as well as models with a scalar field coupled to quadratic curvature invariants. As a first application of the formalism, we discuss (for the first time in the literature) compact stars in Einstein-Dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity. We show that compact objects with central densities typical of neutron stars cannot exist for certain values of the coupling constants of the theory. In fact, the existence and stability of compact stars sets more stringent constraints on the theory than the existence of black hole solutions. This work is a first step in a program to systematically rule out (possibly using Bayesian model selection) theories that are incompatible with astrophysical observations of compact stars.
A present challenge in testing general relativity (GR) with binary black hole gravitational wave detections is the inability to perform model-dependent tests due to the lack of merger waveforms in beyond-GR theories. In this study, we produce the first numerical relativity binary black hole gravitational waveform in Einstein dilaton Gauss-Bonnet (EDGB) gravity, a higher-curvature theory of gravity with motivations in string theory. We evolve a binary black hole system in order-reduced EDGB gravity, with parameters consistent with GW150914. We focus on the merger portion of the waveform, due to the presence of secular growth in the inspiral phase. We compute mismatches with the corresponding general relativity merger waveform, finding that from a post-inspiral-only analysis, we can constrain the EDGB lengthscale to be $sqrt{alpha_mathrm{GB}} lesssim 11$ km.