Exotic Compact Objects Research Articles

Pseudospectrum of horizonless compact objects: A bootstrap instability mechanism

Recent investigations of the pseudospectrum in black hole spacetimes have shown that quasinormal mode frequencies suffer from spectral instabilities. This phenomenon may severely affect gravitational-wave spectroscopy and limit precision tests of general relativity. We extend the pseudospectrum analysis to horizonless exotic compact objects that possess a reflective surface arbitrarily close to the Schwarzschild radius and find that their quasinormal modes also suffer from an overall spectral instability. Even though all the modes themselves decay monotonically, the pseudospectrum contours of equal resonance magnitude around the fundamental mode and the lowest overtones can cross the real axis into the unstable regime of the complex plane, unveiling the existence of nonmodal pseudoresonances. A pseudospectrum analysis further predicts that fluctuations to the system may destabilize the object when next to leading-order effects are considered, as the triggering of pseudoresonant growth can break the order expansion of black hole perturbation theory.

Echoes from backreacting exotic compact objects

The possible detection of echoes in late gravitational-wave signals is the most promising way to test horizonless alternatives to general relativistic black holes, and probe the physics of these hypothetical ultra-compact objects. While there is currently no evidence for the presence of such signatures, better accuracy is expected with the growing wealth of data from gravitational waves observatories. So far, several searches for these specific signals have been performed considering equidistant intervals between consecutive echoes, i.e. quasi-periodic wave-forms, and ignoring possible backreaction effects of the incoming waves. Here we study scalar perturbations in exotic compact object scenarios that account for possible backreaction phenomena. In particular, we find that if one considers the increase of the central object mass due to the partial absorption of the energy carried by the perturbation, the echo signal can be quite different and non-periodic. Apart from this simple scenario, we also consider the case in which, in order to preserve its compactness above the black hole limit, the compact object absorption shuts down in a finite amount of time or leads to an expansion. In both these cases we find interesting new features that should be taken into account in future searches.

Exotic Compact Objects and the Fate of the Light-Ring Instability.

Ultracompact objects with light rings (LRs) but without an event horizon could mimic black holes (BHs) in their strong gravity phenomenology. But are such objects dynamically viable? Stationary and axisymmetric ultracompact objects that can form from smooth, quasi-Minkowski initial data must have at least one stable LR, which has been argued to trigger a spacetime instability; but its development and fate have been unknown. Using fully nonlinear numerical evolutions of ultracompact bosonic stars free of any other known instabilities and introducing a novel adiabatic effective potential technique, we confirm the LRs triggered instability, identifying two possible fates: migration to nonultracompact configurations or collapse to BHs. In concrete examples we show that typical migration (collapse) timescales are not larger than ∼10^{3} light-crossing times, unless the stable LR potential well is very shallow. Our results show that the LR instability is effective in destroying horizonless ultracompact objects that could be plausible BH imitators.

Exotic Compact Objects with Two Dark Matter Fluids

The generic properties of compact objects made of two different fluids of dark matter are studied in a scale-invariant approach. We investigate compact objects with a core–shell structure, where the two fluids are separated, and with mixed dark matter components, where both dark matter fluids are immersed within each other. The constellations considered are combinations of incompressible fluids, free and interacting Fermi gases, and equations of state with a vacuum term, i.e., self-bound dark matter. We find novel features in the mass–radius relations for combined dark matter compact objects, which distinguishes them from compact objects with a single dark matter fluid and compact stars made of ordinary baryonic matter, such as white dwarfs, neutron stars, and quark stars. The maximum compactness of certain combined dark matter stars can reach values up to the causality limit for compact stars but not beyond that limit if causality of the dark matter fluids is ensured.

Prospects for determining the nature of the secondaries of extreme mass-ratio inspirals using the spin-induced quadrupole deformation

The measurement of multipole moments of astrophysical objects through gravitational wave (GW) observations provides a novel way to distinguish black holes from other astrophysical objects. This paper studies the gravitational wave radiation from an extreme mass ratio inspiral (EMRI) system consisting of a supermassive Kerr black hole (the primary object) and a spinning stellar-mass compact object (the secondary object). The quadrupolar deformation induced by the spin of the secondary is different for different astrophysical objects. We compute the effect of the quadrupolar deformation on the GW phase and provide an order of magnitude estimate of whether LISA can distinguish different astrophysical objects through GW phase measurement. We find that although LISA cannot distinguish between a black hole and a neutron star, it can distinguish black holes from a large variety of highly spinning astrophysical objects like superspinars and highly deformable exotic compact objects like boson stars for EMRI systems with relatively large mass ratio ($q\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$). Furthermore, we show that the effect of spin-induced quadrupolar deformation on the GW phase for white dwarf and brown dwarf-EMRI systems can be quite significant even for small values of mass ratio ($q\ensuremath{\lesssim}{10}^{\ensuremath{-}6}$).

Dynamical Instability of Self-Gravitating Membranes.

We show that a generic relativistic membrane with in-plane pressure and surface density having the same sign is unstable with respect to a series of warping mode instabilities with high wave numbers. We also examine the criteria of instability for commonly studied exotic compact objects with membranes, such as gravastars, anti-de Sitter bubbles, and thin-shell wormholes. For example, a gravastar which satisfies the weak energy condition turns out to be dynamically unstable. A thin-layer black hole mimicker is stable only if it has positive pressure and negative surface density (such as a wormhole), or vice versa.

CFT description of BH’s and ECO’s: QNMs, superradiance, echoes and tidal responses

Using conformal field theory and localization tecniques we study the propagation of scalar waves in gravity backgrounds described by Schrödinger like equations with Fuchsian singularities. Exact formulae for the connection matrices relating the asymptotic behaviour of the wave functions near the singularities are obtained in terms of braiding and fusion rules of the CFT. The results are applied to the study of quasi normal modes, absorption cross sections, amplification factors, echoes and tidal responses of black holes (BH) and exotic compact objects (ECO) in four and five dimensions. In particular, we propose a definition of dynamical Love numbers in gravity.

Toward very large baseline interferometry observations of black hole structure

Black holes hold a tremendous discovery potential. In this paper the extent to which the Event Horizon Telescope and its next generation upgrade can resolve their structure is quantified. Black holes are characterized by a perfectly absorptive boundary, with a specific area determined by intrinsic parameters of the black hole. We use a general parametrization of spherically symmetric spacetimes describing deviations from this behavior, with parameters controlling the size of the central object and its interaction with light, in particular through a specular reflection coefficient $\Gamma$ and an intrinsic luminosity measured as a fraction $\eta$ of that of the accretion disc. This enables us to study exotic compact objects and compare them with black holes in a model-independent manner. We determine the image features associated with the existence of a surface in the presence of a geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disc, identifying requirements for VLBI observations to be able to cast meaningful constraints on these parameters, in particular regarding angular resolution and image dynamic range. For face-on observations, constraints of order $\eta\lesssim 10^{-4}, \Gamma\lesssim 10^{-1}$ are possible with an enhanced EHT array, imposing strong constraints on the nature of the central object.

Are there echoes of gravitational waves?

In several approaches to evading the information paradox, the semiclassical black hole is replaced by an Exotic Compact Object (ECO). It has been conjectured that gravitational waves emitted by the merger of ECOs can reflect off the ECOs and produce a detectable ‘echo’. We argue that while a part of the wave can indeed reflect off the surface of an ECO, this reflected wave will get trapped by a new closed trapped surface produced by its own backreaction. Thus, no detectable signal of the echo will emerge to infinity. The only assumption in this analysis is that causality is maintained to leading order in gently curved spacetime. Thus, if echoes are actually detected, then we would face a profound change in our understanding of physics.

Capture of primordial black holes in extrasolar systems

The vast datasets associated with extrasolar systems promise to offer sensitive probes of new physics in the near future. We consider the possibility that such systems may capture primordial black holes (PBHs) or other exotic compact objects, giving rise to unique observational signatures. We estimate the rate of captures by extrasolar systems, accounting for several distinct mechanisms. We find that the capture rate is negligible unless PBHs account for the entirety of dark matter in a narrow mass range just above the threshold of existing constraints from evaporation. In this scenario, luminous evaporating PBHs may be detectable by exoplanet searches.

How to search for mirror stars with Gaia

We show for the first time how to conduct a direct search for dark matter using Gaia observations. Its public astrometric data may contain the signals of mirror stars, exotic compact objects made of atomic dark matter with a tiny kinetic mixing between the dark and SM photon. Mirror stars capture small amounts of interstellar material in their cores, leading to characteristic optical/IR and X-ray emissions. We develop the detailed pipeline for conducting a mirror star search using data from Gaia and other stellar catalogues, and demonstrate our methodology by conducting a search for toy mirror stars with a simplified calculation of their optical/IR emissions over a wide range of mirror star and hidden sector parameters. We also obtain projected exclusion bounds on the abundance and properties of mirror stars if no candidates are found, demonstrating that Gaia is a new and uniquely powerful probe of atomic dark matter. Our study provides the blueprint for a realistic mirror star search that includes a more complete treatment of the captured interstellar gas in the future.

Exotic compact objects: The dark white dwarf

Several dark matter models allow for the intriguing possibility of exotic compact object formation. These objects might have unique characteristics that set them apart from their baryonic counterparts. Furthermore, gravitational wave observations of their mergers may provide the only direct window on a potentially entirely hidden sector. Here we discuss dark white dwarfs, starting with an overview of the microphysical model and analytic scaling relations of macroscopic properties derived from the non-relativistic limit. We use the full relativistic formalism to confirm these scaling relations and demonstrate that dark white dwarfs, if they exist, would have masses and tidal deformabilities that are very different from those of baryonic compact objects. Further, and most importantly, we demonstrate that dark white dwarf mergers would be detectable by current or planned gravitational observatories across several orders of magnitude in the particle-mass parameter space. Lastly, we find universal relations analogous to the compactness-Love and binary Love relations in neutron star literature. Using these results, we show that gravitational wave observations would constrain the properties of the dark matter particles constituting these objects.

Testing gravity with black hole shadow subrings

The black hole shadow, first observed by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017, is the newest method for studying black holes and understanding gravity. Much work has gone into understanding the shadow of a Kerr black hole, including all of the complex astrophysics of the accretion disk, and there are numerous studies of the ideal shadow in non-Kerr black holes and exotic compact objects. This paper presents one of the first studies of the black hole shadow of non-Kerr black holes when the illumination source is an accretion disk. In particular, the ability of current and future very long baseline interferometers to estimate the physical parameters of the black hole spacetime and accretion disk is investigated using two different parametrized black hole metrics that encode a number of possible deviations from Kerr. Both the full shadow image and the individual subrings of the shadow are analyzed as the higher order subrings are weakly dependent on the disk physics and may be a more viable observable for studying the spacetime. The results suggest that with current telescope capabilities and any future earth-based telescopes it will be quite difficult to place strong constraints on departures from the Kerr spacetime, primarily due to the low resolution and strong degeneracies between the spacetime parameters. More optimistically, space-based interferometers may be capable of testing the Kerr nature of black holes and general relativity to comparable or better precision than is currently possible with other observations.

Gravitational-wave echoes from numerical-relativity waveforms via spacetime construction near merging compact objects

We propose a new approach toward reconstructing the late-time near-horizon geometry of merging binary black holes, and toward computing gravitational-wave echoes from exotic compact objects. A binary black-hole merger spacetime can be divided by a time-like hypersurface into a Black-Hole Perturbation (BHP) region, in which the space-time geometry can be approximated by homogeneous linear perturbations of the final Kerr black hole, and a nonlinear region. At late times, the boundary between the two regions is an infalling shell. The BHP region contains late-time gravitational-waves emitted toward the future horizon, as well as those emitted toward future null infinity. In this region, by imposing no-ingoing wave conditions at past null infinity, and matching out-going waves at future null infinity with waveforms computed from numerical relativity, we can obtain waves that travel toward the future horizon. In particular, the Newman-Penrose $\psi_0$ associated with the in-going wave on the horizon is related to tidal deformations measured by fiducial observers floating above the horizon. We further determine the boundary of the BHP region on the future horizon by imposing that $\psi_0$ inside the BHP region can be faithfully represented by quasi-normal modes. Using a physically-motivated way to impose boundary conditions near the horizon, and applying the so-called Boltzmann reflectivity, we compute the quasi-normal modes of non-rotating ECOs, as well as gravitational-wave echoes. We also investigate the detectability of these echoes in current and future detectors, and prospects for parameter estimation.

Rotating black holes and exotic compact objects in the Kerr/CFT correspondence within Rastall gravity

Quantum gravitational effects on the near horizon may alter the black hole's horizon drastically to be partially reflective, portrayed by a quantum membrane. With this modification, the object can be considered as an exotic compact object (ECO). Quantum effects on the strong gravitational regime may also lead to a non-conserved matter tensor that can be described phenomenologically using Rastall gravity. In this work, we study the properties of black holes and ECOs within Rastall gravity using Kerr/CFT correspondence. We systematically investigate the properties of the most general rotating black hole solutions in Rastall gravity, i.e., Kerr-Newman-NUT-Kiselev, and reveal its hidden conformal symmetry. The Cardy microscopic entropy formula and absorption cross-sections from 2D CFT are computed and then matched with gravity calculation. We also extend the dual CFT analysis for studying the properties of ECOs. The existence of the quantum membrane leads to the appearance of the gravitational echoes that is manifested as an oscillatory feature on the absorption cross-section. We compute the absorption cross-section and quasi-normal modes in the dual CFT picture. We also compare the absorption cross-section of ECOs to that of black holes. We find that the Rastall coupling constant plays a significant role for both objects. We also obtain that the echo time delay depends explicitly on the Rastall coupling constant. This coupling constant may play a role to recover the correction on time delay that is believed as a non-linear physics effect. Henceforth, the signature of the Rastall gravity can be probed from the time-delay observation.

Soliton boson stars, Q-balls and the causal Buchdahl bound

Self-gravitating non-topological solitons whose potential admits multiple vacua are promising candidates for exotic compact objects. Such objects can arise in several extensions of the Standard Model and could be produced in the early Universe.In this work, we focus on objects made from complex scalars (gravitating Q-balls/soliton boson stars),deriving analytic solutions in spherical symmetry and comparing them with fully numerical ones.In the high-compactness limit we find that these objects present an effectively linear equation of state, thus saturating the Buchdahl limit with the causality constraint.Far from that limit, these objects behave either as flat space-time Q-balls or (in the low-compactness limit) as mini boson stars stabilized by quantum pressure. We establish the robustness of this picture by analyzing a variety of potentials (including cosine, quartic and sextic ones).

Quantum Love numbers

The response of a gravitating object to an external tidal field is encoded in its Love numbers, which identically vanish for classical black holes (BHs). Here we show, using standard time-independent quantum perturbation theory, that for a quantum BH, generically, the Love numbers are nonvanishing and negative, and that their magnitude depends on the lowest-lying levels of the quantum spectrum of the BH. We calculate the quadrupolar electric quantum Love number of slowly rotating BHs and show that it depends most strongly on the first excited level of the quantum BH. We then compare our results to the same Love number of exotic ultra compact objects and to that of classical compact stars and highlight their different parametric dependence. Finally, we discuss the detectability of the quadrupolar quantum Love number in future precision gravitational-wave observations and show that, under favorable circumstances, its magnitude is large enough to imprint an observable signature on the gravitational waves emitted during the inspiral phase of two moderately spinning BHs.

Tidal heating of black holes and exotic compact objects on the brane

During the early phase of in-spiral of a binary system, the tidal heating of a compact object due to its companion plays a significant role in the determination of the orbital evolution of the binary. The phenomenon depends crucially on the `hairs', as well as on the nature of the compact object. It turns out that the presence of extra dimension affects both these properties, by incorporating an extra tidal charge for braneworld black holes and also by introducing quantum effects, leading to possible existence of exotic compact objects. It turns out that the phasing information from tidal heating in the gravitational wave waveform can constrain the tidal charge inherited from extra dimension to a value $\sim 10^{-6}$, the most stringent constraint, to date. Moreover, second order effects in tidal heating for exotic compact objects, also reveals an oscillatory behaviour with respect to spin, which has unique signatures.

Gravitational-wave echoes from spinning exotic compact objects: Numerical waveforms from the Teukolsky equation

We present numerical waveforms of gravitational-wave echoes from spinning exotic compact objects (ECOs) that result from binary black hole coalescence. We obtain these echoes by solving the Teukolsky equation for the ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{4}$ associated with gravitational waves that propagate toward the horizon of a Kerr spacetime, and process the subsequent reflections of the horizon-going wave by the surface of the ECO, which lies right above the Kerr horizon. The trajectories of the infalling objects are modified from Kerr geodesics, such that the gravitational waves propagating toward future null infinity match those from merging black holes with comparable masses. In this way, the corresponding echoes can be used to approximate to those from nonspinning comparable-mass mergers. For boundary conditions at the ECO surface, we adopt recent work using the membrane paradigm, which relates ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{0}$ associated with the horizon-going wave and ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{4}$ of the wave that leaves the ECO surface. We obtain ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{0}$ of the horizon-going wave from ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{4}$ using the Teukolsky-Starobinsky relation. The echoes we obtain turn out to be significantly weaker than those from previous studies that generate echo waveforms by modeling the ringdown part of binary black hole coalescence waveforms as originating from the past horizon.

Gravitational-wave constraints on the GWTC-2 events by measuring the tidal deformability and the spin-induced quadrupole moment

Gravitational waves from compact binary coalescences provide a unique laboratory to test properties of compact objects. As alternatives to the ordinary black holes in general relativity, various exotic compact objects have been proposed. Some of them have largely different values of the tidal deformability and spin-induced quadrupole moment from those of black holes, and their binaries could be distinguished from the binary black hole by using gravitational waves emitted during their inspiral regime, excluding the highly model-dependent merger and ringdown regimes. We reanalyze gravitational waves from low-mass merger events in the GWTC-2, detected by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo. Focusing on the influence of tidal deformability and spin-induced quadrupole moment in the inspiral waveform, we provide model-independent constraints on deviations from the standard binary black hole case. We find that all events that we have analyzed are consistent with the waveform of the binary black hole in general relativity. Bayesian model selection shows that the hypothesis that the binary is composed of exotic compact objects is disfavored by all events.