No Arabic abstract
Motivated by the desire to understand the leading order nonlinear gravitational wave interactions around arbitrarily rapidly rotating Kerr black holes, we describe a numerical code designed to compute second order vacuum perturbations on such spacetimes. A general discussion of the formalism we use is presented in (arXiv:2008.11770); here we show how we numerically implement that formalism with a particular choice of coordinates and tetrad conditions, and give example results for black holes with dimensionless spin parameters $a=0.7$ and $a=0.998$. We first solve the Teukolsky equation for the linearly perturbed Weyl scalar $Psi_4^{(1)}$, followed by direct reconstruction of the spacetime metric from $Psi_4^{(1)}$, and then solve for the dynamics of the second order perturbed Weyl scalar $Psi_4^{(2)}$. This code is a first step toward a more general purpose second order code, and we outline how our basic approach could be further developed to address current questions of interest, including extending the analysis of ringdown in black hole mergers to before the linear regime, exploring gravitational wave turbulence around near-extremal Kerr black holes, and studying the physics of extreme mass ratio inspiral.
Motivated by gravitational wave observations of binary black hole mergers, we present a procedure to compute the leading order nonlinear gravitational wave interactions around a Kerr black hole. We describe the formalism used to derive the equations for second order perturbations. We develop a procedure that allows us to reconstruct the first order metric perturbation solely from knowledge of the solution to the first order Teukolsky equation, without the need of Hertz potentials. Finally, we illustrate this metric reconstruction procedure in the asymptotic limit for the first order quasi-normal modes of Kerr. In a companion paper, we present a numerical implementation of these ideas.
We consider the axisymmetric, linear perturbations of Kerr-Newman black holes, allowing for arbitrarily large (but subextremal) angular momentum and electric charge. By exploiting the famous Carter-Robinson identities, developed previously for the proofs of (stationary) black hole uniqueness results, we construct a positive-definite energy functional for these perturbations and establish its conservation for a class of (coupled, gravitational and electromagnetic) solutions to the linearized field equations. Our analysis utilizes the familiar (Hamiltonian) reduction of the field equations (for axisymmetric geometries) to a system of wave map fields coupled to a 2+1-dimensional Lorentzian metric on the relevant quotient 3-manifold. The propagating `dynamical degrees of freedom of this system are entirely captured by the wave map fields, which take their values in a four dimensional, negatively curved (complex hyperbolic) Riemannian target space whereas the base-space Lorentzian metric is entirely determined, in our setup, by elliptic constraints and gauge conditions.
We numerically solve the Klein-Gordon equation at second order in cosmological perturbation theory in closed form for a single scalar field, describing the method employed in detail. We use the slow-roll version of the second order source term and argue that our method is extendable to the full equation. We consider two standard single field models and find that the results agree with previous calculations using analytic methods, where comparison is possible. Our procedure allows the evolution of second order perturbations in general and the calculation of the non-linearity parameter f_NL to be examined in cases where there is no analytical solution available.
The open question of whether a Kerr black hole can become tidally deformed or not has profound implications for fundamental physics and gravitational-wave astronomy. We consider a Kerr black hole embedded in a weak and slowly varying, but otherwise arbitrary, multipolar tidal environment. By solving the static Teukolsky equation for the gauge-invariant Weyl scalar $psi_0$, and by reconstructing the corresponding metric perturbation in an ingoing radiation gauge, for a general harmonic index $ell$, we compute the linear response of a Kerr black hole to the tidal field. This linear response vanishes identically for a Schwarzschild black hole and for an axisymmetric perturbation of a spinning black hole. For a nonaxisymmetric perturbation of a spinning black hole, however, the linear response does not vanish, and it contributes to the Geroch-Hansen multipole moments of the perturbed Kerr geometry. As an application, we compute explicitly the rotational black hole tidal Love numbers that couple the induced quadrupole moments to the quadrupolar tidal fields, to linear order in the black hole spin, and we introduce the corresponding notion of tidal Love tensor. Finally, we show that those induced quadrupole moments are closely related to the well-known physical phenomenon of tidal torquing of a spinning body interacting with a tidal gravitational environment.
We investigate the first law of thermodynamics in the stationary axisymmetric configurations composed of two Kerr black holes separated by a massless strut. Our analysis employs the recent results obtained for the extended double-Kerr solution and for thermodynamics of the static single and binary black holes. We show that, similar to the electrostatic case, in the stationary binary systems the thermodynamic length $ell$ is defined by the formula $ell=Lexp(gamma_0)$, where $L$ is the coordinate length of the strut, and $gamma_0$ is the value of the metric function $gamma$ on the strut.