Spherical Perturbations Research Articles

An instability of the standard model of cosmology creates the anomalous acceleration without dark energy.

We identify the condition for smoothness at the centre of spherically symmetric solutions of Einstein's original equations without the cosmological constant or dark energy. We use this to derive a universal phase portrait which describes general, smooth, spherically symmetric solutions near the centre of symmetry when the pressure p=0. In this phase portrait, the critical k=0 Friedmann space-time appears as a saddle rest point which is unstable to spherical perturbations. This raises the question as to whether the Friedmann space-time is observable by redshift versus luminosity measurements looking outwards from any point. The unstable manifold of the saddle rest point corresponding to Friedmann describes the evolution of local uniformly expanding space-times whose accelerations closely mimic the effects of dark energy. A unique simple wave perturbation from the radiation epoch is shown to trigger the instability, match the accelerations of dark energy up to second order and distinguish the theory from dark energy at third order. In this sense, anomalous accelerations are not only consistent with Einstein's original theory of general relativity, but are a prediction of it without the cosmological constant or dark energy.

Einstein-Vlasov system in spherical symmetry. II. Spherical perturbations of static solutions

We reduce the equations governing the spherically symmetric perturbations of static spherically symmetric solutions of the Einstein-Vlasov system (with either massive or massless particles) to a single stratified wave equation $-\psi_{,tt}=H\psi$, with $H$ containing second derivatives in radius, and integrals over energy and angular momentum. We identify an inner product with respect to which $H$ is symmetric, and use the Ritz method to approximate the lowest eigenvalues of $H$ numerically. For two representative background solutions with massless particles we find a single unstable mode with a growth rate consistent with the universal one found by Akbarian and Choptuik in nonlinear numerical time evolutions.

Dynamical formation of a Reissner-Nordström black hole with scalar hair in a cavity

In a recent letter, we presented numerical relativity simulations, solving the full Einstein--Maxwell--Klein-Gordon equations, of superradiantly unstable Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes (BHs), enclosed in a cavity. Low frequency, spherical perturbations of a charged scalar field, trigger this instability. The system's evolution was followed into the non-linear regime, until it relaxed into an equilibrium configuration, found to be a $\textit{hairy}$ BH: a charged horizon in equilibrium with a scalar field condensate, whose phase is oscillating at the (final) critical frequency. Here, we investigate the impact of adding self-interactions to the scalar field. In particular, we find sufficiently large self-interactions suppress the exponential growth phase, known from linear theory, and promote a non-monotonic behaviour of the scalar field energy. Furthermore, we discuss in detail the influence of the various parameters in this model: the initial BH charge, the initial scalar perturbation, the scalar field charge, mass, and the position of the cavity's boundary (mirror). We also investigate the "explosive" non-linear regime previously reported to be akin to a bosenova. A mode analysis shows that the "explosions" can be interpreted as the decay into the BH of modes that exit the superradiant regime.

A variational principle for the axisymmetric stability of rotating relativistic stars

It is well known that all rotating perfect fluid stars in general relativity are unstable to certain non-axisymmetric perturbations via the Chandrasekhar–Friedman–Schutz (CFS) instability. However, the mechanism of the CFS instability requires, in an essential way, the loss of angular momentum by gravitational radiation and, in many instances, it acts on too long a timescale to be physically/astrophysically relevant. It is therefore of interest to examine the stability of rotating, relativistic stars to axisymmetric perturbations, where the CFS instability does not occur. In this paper, we provide a Rayleigh–Ritz-type variational principle for testing the stability of perfect fluid stars to axisymmetric perturbations, which generalizes to axisymmetric perturbations of rotating stars a variational principle given by Chandrasekhar for spherical perturbations of static, spherical stars. Our variational principle provides a lower bound to the rate of exponential growth in the case of instability. The derivation closely parallels the derivation of a recently obtained variational principle for analyzing the axisymmetric stability of black holes.

Explosion and Final State of an Unstable Reissner-Nordström Black Hole.

A Reissner-Nordström black hole (BH) is superradiantly unstable against spherical perturbations of a charged scalar field enclosed in a cavity, with a frequency lower than a critical value. We use numerical relativity techniques to follow the development of this unstable system-dubbed a charged BH bomb-into the nonlinear regime, solving the full Einstein-Maxwell-Klein-Gordon equations, in spherical symmetry. We show that (i)the process stops before all the charge is extracted from the BH, and (ii)the system settles down into a hairy BH: a charged horizon in equilibrium with a scalar field condensate, whose phase is oscillating at the (final) critical frequency. For a low scalar field charge q, the final state is approached smoothly and monotonically. For large q, however, the energy extraction overshoots, and an explosive phenomenon, akin to a bosenova, pushes some energy back into the BH. The charge extraction, by contrast, does not reverse.

Quasi-normal acoustic oscillations in the transonic Bondi flow

In recent work, we analyzed the dynamics of spherical and nonspherical acoustic perturbations of the Michel flow, describing the steady radial accretion of a relativistic perfect fluid into a nonrotating black hole. We showed that such perturbations undergo quasi-normal oscillations and computed the corresponding complex frequencies as a function of the black hole mass M and the radius r_c of the sonic horizon. It was found that when r_c is much larger than the Schwarzschild radius r_H = 2GM/c^2 of the black hole, these frequencies scale like the surface gravity of the analogue black hole associated with the acoustic metric. In this work, we analyze the Newtonian limit of the Michel solution and its acoustic perturbations. In this limit, the flow outside the sonic horizon reduces to the transonic Bondi flow, and the acoustic metric reduces to the one introduced by Unruh in the context of experimental black hole evaporation. We show that for the transonic Bondi flow, Unruh's acoustic metric describes an analogue black hole and compute the associated quasi-normal frequencies. We prove that they do indeed scale like the surface gravity of the acoustic black hole, thus providing an explanation for our previous results in the relativistic setting.

Quasinormal acoustic oscillations in the Michel flow

We study spherical and nonspherical linear acoustic perturbations of the Michel flow, which describes the steady radial accretion of a perfect fluid into a nonrotating black hole. The dynamics of such perturbations are governed by a scalar wave equation on an effective curved background geometry determined by the acoustic metric, which is constructed from the spacetime metric and the particle density and four-velocity of the fluid. For the problem under consideration in this article the acoustic metric has the same qualitative features as an asymptotically flat, static and spherically symmetric black hole, and thus it represents a natural astrophysical analogue black hole. As for the case of a scalar field propagating on a Schwarzschild background, we show that acoustic perturbations of the Michel flow exhibit quasi-normal oscillations. Based on a new numerical method for determining the solutions of the radial mode equation, we compute the associated frequencies and analyze their dependency on the radii of the event and sonic horizons and the angular momentum number. Our results for the fundamental frequencies are compared to those obtained from an independent numerical Cauchy evolution, finding good agreement between the two approaches. When the radius of the sonic horizon is large compared to the event horizon radius, we find that the quasi-normal frequencies scale approximately like the surface gravity associated with the sonic horizon.

Evolution of spherical overdensities in holographic dark energy models

In this work we investigate the spherical collapse model in flat FRW dark energy universes. We consider the Holographic Dark Energy (HDE) model as a dynamical dark energy scenario with a slowly time-varying equation-of-state (EoS) parameter $w_{\rm de}$ in order to evaluate the effects of the dark energy component on structure formation in the universe. We first calculate the evolution of density perturbations in the linear regime for both phantom and quintessence behavior of the HDE model and compare the results with standard Einstein-de Sitter (EdS) and $\Lambda$CDM models. We then calculate the evolution of two characterizing parameters in the spherical collapse model, i.e., the linear density threshold $\delta_{\rm c}$ and the virial overdensity parameter $\Delta_{\rm vir}$. We show that in HDE cosmologies the growth factor $g(a)$ and the linear overdensity parameter $\delta_{\rm c}$ fall behind the values for a $\Lambda$CDM universe while the virial overdensity $\Delta_{\rm vir}$ is larger in HDE models than in the $\Lambda$CDM model. We also show that the ratio between the radius of the spherical perturbations at the virialization and turn-around time is smaller in HDE cosmologies than that predicted in a $\Lambda$CDM universe. Hence the growth of structures starts earlier in HDE models than in $\Lambda$CDM cosmologies and more concentrated objects can form in this case. It has been shown that the non-vanishing surface pressure leads to smaller virial radius and larger virial overdensity $\Delta_{\rm vir}$. We compare the predicted number of halos in HDE cosmologies and find out that in general this value is smaller than for $\Lambda$CDM models at higher redshifts and we compare different mass function prescriptions. Finally, we compare the results of the HDE models with observations.

Dynamics of dark energy in collapsing halo of dark matter

We investigate the non-linear evolution of spherical density and velocity perturbations of dark matter and dark energy in the expanding Universe. For this we have used the conservation and Einstein equations to describe the evolution of gravitationally coupled inhomogeneities of dark matter, dark energy and radiation from the linear stage in the early Universe to the non-linear stage at the current epoch. A simple method of numerical integration of the system of non-linear differential equations for evolution of the central part of halo is proposed. The results are presented for the halo of cluster (k=2 Mpc-1) and supercluster scales (k=0.2 Mpc-1) and show that a quintessential scalar field dark energy with a low value of effective speed of sound cs<0.1 can have a notable impact on the formation of large-scale structures in the expanding Universe.

Roles of positively charged heavy ions and degenerate plasma pressure on cylindrical and spherical ion acoustic solitary waves

The properties of heavy-ion-acoustic (HIA) solitary structures associated with the nonlinear propagation of cylindrical and spherical electrostatic perturbations in an unmagnetized, collisionless dense plasma system has been investigated theoretically. Our considered model contains degenerate electron and inertial light ion fluids, and positively charged static heavy ions, which is valid for both of the non-relativistic and ultra-relativistic limits. The Korteweg-de Vries (K-dV) and modified K-dV (mK-dV) equations have been derived by employing the reductive perturbation method, and numerically examined in order. It has been found that the effect of degenerate pressure and number density of electron and inertial light ion fluids, and positively charged static heavy ions significantly modify the basic features of HIA solitary waves. It is also noted that the inertial light ion fluid is the source of dispersion for HIA waves and is responsible for the formation of solitary waves. The basic features and the underlying physics of HIA solitary waves, which are relevant to some astrophysical compact objects, are briefly discussed.

Precise response functions in all-electron methods: Generalization to nonspherical perturbations and application to NiO

In a previous publication [Betzinger, Friedrich, G\"orling, and Bl\"ugel, Phys. Rev. B 85, 245124 (2012)] we presented a technique to compute accurate all-electron response functions, e.g., the density response function, within the full-potential linearized augmented-plane-wave (FLAPW) method. Response contributions that are not captured (completely) within the finite Hilbert space spanned by the LAPW basis are taken into account by an incomplete-basis-set correction (IBC). The latter is based on a formal response of the basis functions themselves, which is derived by exploiting their dependence on the effective potential. Its construction requires the solution of radial differential equations, having the form of Sternheimer equations, by numerical integration. The approach includes a formally exact treatment of the response contribution from the core states. While we restricted the formalism to spherical perturbations in the previous work, we here generalize the formalism to nonspherical perturbations. The improvements are demonstrated with exact-exchange optimized-effective-potential (EXX-OEP) calculations of antiferromagnetic NiO. It is shown that with the generalized IBC a basis-set convergence is realized that is as fast as in density-functional theory calculations using standard local or semilocal functionals. The EXX-OEP band gap, magnetic moment, and spectral function of NiO are in substantially better agreement with experiment than results obtained from calculations with local and semilocal functionals.

Partially massless gravitons do not destroy general relativity black holes

Recent nonlinear completions of Fierz-Pauli theory for a massive spin-2 field include nonlinear massive gravity and bimetric theories. The spectrum of black-hole solutions in these theories is rich, and comprises the same vacuum solutions of Einstein's gravity enlarged to include a cosmological constant. It was recently shown that Schwarzschild (de Sitter) black holes in these theories are generically unstable against spherical perturbations. Here we show that a notable exception is partially massless gravity, where the mass of the graviton is fixed in terms of the cosmological constant by \mu^2=2\Lambda/3 and a new gauge invariance emerges. We find that general-relativity black holes are stable in this limit. Remarkably, the spectrum of massive gravitational perturbations is isospectral.

Intra-Galactic Thin Shell Wormhole and Its Stability

In this paper, we construct an intra-galactic thin shell wormhole joining two copies of identical galactic space times described by the Mannheim-Kazanas de Sitter solution in conformal gravity and study its stability under spherical perturbations. We assume the thin shell material as a Chaplygin gas and discuss in detail the values of the relevant parameters under which the wormhole is stable. We study the stability following the method by Eiroa and we also qualitatively analyze the dynamics through the method of Weierstrass. We find that the wormhole is generally unstable but there is a small interval in radius for which the wormhole is stable.

Acoustic waves of different geometry in polydisperse bubble liquids: Theory and experiment

A mathematical model that determines the propagation of acoustic waves of different geometry in two-fraction mixtures of liquids with polydispersed gas bubbles of various compositions is presented. A unique dispersion relationship, which takes into account the propagation of the plane, spherical, and cylindrical perturbations in these mixtures, is derived. It is shown that the theoretical curves of the phase velocity and the damping factor agree well with the experimental data involving the resonant frequency range.

Weighed scalar averaging in LTB dust models: part II. A formalism of exact perturbations

We examine the exact perturbations that arise from the q-average formalism that was applied in the preceding article (part I) to Lemaître–Tolman–Bondi (LTB) models. By introducing an initial value parametrization, we show that all LTB scalars that take an FLRW ‘look-alike’ form (frequently used in the literature dealing with LTB models) follow as q-averages of covariant scalars that are common to FLRW models. These q-scalars determine for every averaging domain a unique FLRW background state through Darmois matching conditions at the domain boundary, though the definition of this background does not require an actual matching with an FLRW region (Swiss cheese-type models). Local perturbations describe the deviation from the FLRW background state through the local gradients of covariant scalars at the boundary of every comoving domain, while non-local perturbations do so in terms of the intuitive notion of a ‘contrast’ of local scalars with respect to FLRW reference values that emerge from q-averages assigned to the whole domain or the whole time slice in the asymptotic limit. We derive fluid flow evolution equations that completely determine the dynamics of the models in terms of the q-scalars and both types of perturbations. A rigorous formalism of exact spherical nonlinear perturbations is defined over the FLRW background state associated with the q-scalars, recovering the standard results of linear perturbation theory in the appropriate limit. We examine the notion of the amplitude and illustrate the differences between local and non-local perturbations by qualitative diagrams and through an example of a cosmic density void that follows from the numeric solution of the evolution equations.

Spherical perturbations of hairy black holes in designer gravity theories

We study the spectrum of the scalar l = 0 quasi-normal frequencies of anti-de Sitter hairy black holes in four- and five-dimensional designer gravity theories of the Einstein-scalar type, arising as consistent truncations of gauged supergravity. In the dual field theory, such hairy black holes represent thermal states in which the operator corresponding to the bulk scalar field is condensed, due to the multi-trace deformation associated with non-standard boundary conditions. We show that, in a particular class of models, the effective potential describing the vacua of the deformed dual theory can be identified, at large values of the condensate, with the deformation plus the conformal coupling of the condensate to the curvature of the boundary geometry. In this limit, we show that the least damped quasi-normal frequency of the corresponding hairy black holes can be accurately predicted by the curvature of the effective potential describing the field theory at finite entropy.

On the stability of scalar-vacuum space-times

We study the stability of static, spherically symmetric solutions to the Einstein equations with a scalar field as the source. We describe a general methodology of studying small radial perturbations of scalar-vacuum configurations with arbitrary potentials V(\phi), and in particular space-times with throats (including wormholes), which are possible if the scalar is phantom. At such a throat, the effective potential for perturbations V_eff has a positive pole (a potential wall) that prevents a complete perturbation analysis. We show that, generically, (i) V_eff has precisely the form required for regularization by the known S-deformation method, and (ii) a solution with the regularized potential leads to regular scalar field and metric perturbations of the initial configuration. The well-known conformal mappings make these results also applicable to scalar-tensor and f(R) theories of gravity. As a particular example, we prove the instability of all static solutions with both normal and phantom scalars and V(\phi) = 0 under spherical perturbations. We thus confirm the previous results on the unstable nature of anti-Fisher wormholes and Fisher's singular solution and prove the instability of other branches of these solutions including the anti-Fisher "cold black holes".

Effective geometry of a white dwarf

The ``effective geometry'' formalism is used to study the perturbations of a white dwarf described as a self-gravitating fermion gas with a completely degenerate relativistic equation of state of barotropic type. The quantum nature of the system causes an absence of homological properties, manifested instead by polytropic stars, and requires a parametric study of the solutions both at the numerical and analytical level. We have explicitly derived a compact analytical parametric approximate solution of Pad\'e type, which gives density curves and stellar radii in good accordance with already existing numerical results. After validation of this new type of approximate solutions, we use them to construct the effective acoustic metric governing general perturbations following Chebsch's formalism. Even in this quantum case, the stellar surface exhibits a curvature singularity due to the vanishing of density, as already evidenced in past studies on nonquantum self-gravitating polytropic stars. The equations of the theory are finally numerically integrated in the simpler case of irrotational spherical pulsating perturbations, including the effect of backreaction, in order to have a dynamical picture of the process occurring in the acoustic metric.

Higher-dimensional thin-shell wormholes in Einstein–Yang–Mills–Gauss–Bonnet gravity

We present thin-shell wormhole solutions in the Einstein–Yang–Mills–Gauss–Bonnet (EYMGB) theory in higher dimensions d ⩾ 5. Exact black hole solutions are employed for this purpose where the radius of the thin shell lies outside the event horizon. For some reasons the cases d = 5 and d > 5 are treated separately. The surface energy–momentum of the thin shell creates surface pressures to resist against collapse and rendering stable wormholes possible. We test the stability of the wormholes against spherical perturbations through a linear energy–pressure relation and plot stability regions. Apart from this restricted stability we investigate the possibility of normal (i.e. non-exotic) matter which satisfies the energy conditions. For negative values of the Gauss–Bonnet (GB) parameter we obtain such physical wormholes.

Spherical collapse model in time varying vacuum cosmologies

We investigate the virialization of cosmic structures in the framework of flat Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker cosmological models, in which the vacuum energy density evolves with time. In particular, our analysis focuses on the study of spherical matter perturbations, as they decouple from the background expansion, ``turn around,'' and finally collapse. We generalize the spherical collapse model in the case when the vacuum energy is a running function of the Hubble rate, $\ensuremath{\Lambda}=\ensuremath{\Lambda}(H)$. A particularly well-motivated model of this type is the so-called quantum field vacuum, in which $\ensuremath{\Lambda}(H)$ is a quadratic function, $\ensuremath{\Lambda}(H)={n}_{0}+{n}_{2}{H}^{2}$, with ${n}_{0}\ensuremath{\ne}0$. This model was previously studied by our team using the latest high quality cosmological data to constrain its free parameters, as well as the predicted cluster formation rate. It turns out that the corresponding Hubble expansion history resembles that of the traditional $\ensuremath{\Lambda}\mathrm{CDM}$ cosmology. We use this $\ensuremath{\Lambda}(t)\mathrm{CDM}$ framework to illustrate the fact that the properties of the spherical collapse model (virial density, collapse factor, etc.) depend on the choice of the considered vacuum energy (homogeneous or clustered). In particular, if the distribution of the vacuum energy is clustered, then, under specific conditions, we can produce more concentrated structures with respect to the homogeneous vacuum energy case.