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At least 109 records · Page 6
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

The Sensitivity of Future Gamma-Ray Telescopes to Primordial Black Holes

The strongest existing constraints on primordial black holes with masses in the range of $m_{\rm BH} \sim 10^{15}-10^{17} \, {\rm g}$ have been derived from measurements of the local cosmic-ray electron-positron flux by Voyager 1, and MeV-scale gamma-ray observations of the Inner Galaxy by COMPTEL and INTEGRAL. In this paper, we evaluate the sensitivity of future MeV-scale gamma-ray telescopes such as e-ASTROGAM or AMEGO to Hawking radiation. We show that such an instrument would be able to provide the strongest constraints on black holes in the mass range of $m_{\rm BH} \sim (0.6-20) \times 10^{16} \, {\rm g}$, typically exceeding current constraints by approximately two orders of magnitude. In scenarios in which the observed 511 keV excess is the result of Hawking radiation, we find that e-ASTROGAM or AMEGO would not only be able to detect the Hawking radiation from the Inner Galaxy, but could precisely measure the abundance and mass distribution of the black holes responsible for this signal.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

AdS 5 black hole entropy near the BPS limit

We analyze AdS 5 black holes that are nearly supersymmetric. They depart from the BPS limit in two distinct ways: a temperature takes them above extremality and a potential maintains extremality but violates a certain constraint. We study the thermodynamics of these deformations and their interplay in detail. We discuss recent microscopic computations of BPS black hole entropy in N = 4 SYM and generalize the arguments to the nearBPS regime by relaxing constraints imposed by supersymmetry. Our methods recover gravitational results from microscopic theory also for nearBPS black holes.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Black hole cannibalism

Here, we consider a version of the Hayden–Preskill thought experiment in which the message thrown into the black hole is itself a smaller black hole. We then discuss the implications of the existence of a recovery channel for this black hole message at asymptotic infinity, resulting in a sharpening of the black hole information paradox for observers who never need to approach a horizon. We suggest decoherence mechanisms as a way of resolving this sharpened paradox.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Black Hole Formation Accompanied by the Supernova Explosion of a 40 M ⊙ Progenitor Star

Abstract We have simulated the collapse and evolution of the core of a solar-metallicity 40 M ⊙ star and find that it explodes vigorously by the neutrino mechanism, despite its very high “compactness.” Within ∼1.5 s of explosion, a black hole forms. The explosion is very asymmetrical and has a total explosion energy of ∼1.6 × 10 51 erg. At black hole formation, its baryon mass is ∼2.434 M ⊙ and gravitational mass is 2.286 M ⊙ . Seven seconds after black hole formation, an additional ∼0.2 M ⊙ is accreted, leaving a black hole baryon mass of ∼2.63 M ⊙ . A disk forms around the proto−neutron star, from which a pair of neutrino-driven jets emanates. These jets accelerate some of the matter up to speeds of ∼45,000 km s −1 and contain matter with entropies of ∼50. The large spatial asymmetry in the explosion results in a residual black hole recoil speed of ∼1000 km s −1 . This novel black hole formation channel now joins the other black hole formation channel between ∼12 and ∼15 M ⊙ discovered previously and implies that the black hole/neutron star birth ratio for solar-metallicity stars could be ∼20%. However, one channel leaves black holes in perhaps the ∼5–15 M ⊙ range with low kick speeds, while the other leaves black holes in perhaps the ∼2.5–3.0 M ⊙ mass range with high kick speeds. However, even ∼8.8 s after core bounce the newly formed black hole is still accreting at a rate of ∼2 × 10 −2 M ⊙ s −1 , and whether the black hole eventually achieves a significantly larger mass over time is yet to be determined.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2020

From microscopic black hole entropy toward Hawking radiationc

The AdS/CFT correspondence has recently provided a novel approach for counting the microstates of black holes impressively matching the macroscopic Bekenstein–Hawking entropy formula of rotating electrically charged asymptotically AdS black holes in four to seven dimensions. This approach is designed for supersymmetric extremal black holes, but can also be extended to nonsupersymmetric, near-extremal black holes. Besides the dual higher-dimensional boundary CFT, an effective 2D CFT emerges in a certain near-horizon limit accounting for both the extremal and the near-extremal black hole entropies. Furthermore, this effective 2D description is universal across dimensions and comes naturally equipped with an approach to quantitatively tackle aspects of Hawking radiation.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

GW190412: Observation of a binary-black-hole coalescence with asymmetric masses

We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO's and Virgo's third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05:30:44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19. The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: A ~30 M ⊙ black hole merged with a ~8 M ⊙ black hole companion. The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.22 and 0.60 (90% probability). Asymmetric systems are predicted to emit gravitational waves with stronger contributions from higher multipoles, and indeed we find strong evidence for gravitational radiation beyond the leading quadrupolar order in the observed signal. A suite of tests performed on GW190412 indicates consistency with Einstein's general theory of relativity. While the mass ratio of this system differs from all previous detections, we show that it is consistent with the population model of stellar binary black holes inferred from the first two observing runs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Perturbations of Gibbons-Maeda black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theories

The study of perturbations around black hole backgrounds in general relativity and Einstein-Maxwell theory has a long history, going back to the work of Regge and Wheeler in the 1950s. As part of a broader investigation of perturbations around black holes in supergravity, we describe here our results for the perturbations around the Gibbons-Maeda static charged black holes in a class of Einstein-Maxwell-Dilaton theories. Our analysis follows the general strategy developed by Chandrasekhar and Xanthopoulos for the perturbations of the Reissner-Nordström black hole. Here, the analysis is considerably more involved, because of the presence of the dilaton field, which couples to the other polar modes. We nonetheless find that the problem is completely solvable, in the sense that one can separate variables and eventually describe all the perturbations in terms of diagonalised second-order radial equations. We are able to prove the mode stability of all the Gibbons-Maeda black hole solutions. Published by the American Physical Society 2024

Pope, C. N. (ORCID:0000000284012564)↗
DOE OSTI2024

Gravitational waves from primordial black hole evaporation with large extra dimensions

Abstract The spectra of gravitational waves from black hole evaporation generically peak at frequencies of order the Hawking temperature, making this signal ultra-high frequency for primordial black holes evaporating in the early universe. This motivates us to consider small black holes in theories with large extra dimensions, for which the peak frequency can be lowered substantially, since the true bulk Planck scaleM * can be much smaller than the effectiveM Pl . We study the emission of brane-localized gravitons during the Hawking evaporation of ultra-light primordial black holes in the context of theories with large extra dimensions, with the ultimate goal of computing the contribution to the stochastic gravitational wave background. To accurately model black hole evolution, we compute greybody factors for particles of spin-0, 1/2, 1, and 2 emitted on the brane and in the bulk, presuming the majority of emission proceeds during the Schwarzschild phase. We then compute the power spectrum and present day spectral density parameter for brane-localized gravitons contributing to a gravitational wave signal. We find that for an optimal choice of parameters, the peak frequency plateaus in the sub-MHz regime, within range of planned high-frequency gravitational wave detectors, making this scenario a target for detection once their sensitivity exceeds ΔN eff bounds.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2024

Random Circuits in the Black Hole Interior

In this paper, we present a quantitative holographic relation between a microscopic measure of randomness and the geometric length of the wormhole in the black hole interior. To this end, we perturb an AdS black hole with Brownian semiclassical sources, implementing the continuous version of a random quantum circuit for the black hole. We use the random circuit to prepare ensembles of states of the black hole whose semiclassical duals contain Einstein-Rosen (ER) caterpillars: long cylindrical wormholes with large numbers of matter inhomogeneities, of linearly growing length with the circuit time. In this setup, we show semiclassically that the ensemble of ER caterpillars of average length $k\ell_Δ$ and matter correlation scale $\ell_Δ$ forms an approximate quantum state $k$-design of the black hole. At exponentially long circuit times, the ensemble of ER caterpillars becomes polynomial-copy indistinguishable from a collection of random states of the black hole. We comment on the implications of these results for holographic circuit complexity and for the holographic description of the black hole interior.

FOS: Physical sciences↗
DOE OSTI2024

Kerr black hole evaporation and Page curve

In this paper, we compute the black hole entropy and the entanglement entropy of Hawking radiations due to photons during the evaporation of a 4D asymptotically flat Kerr black hole. The Page curve for the Kerr black hole is obtained in the original way à la Page, and it qualitatively mimics the curve for the Schwarzschild black hole but has some new features.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2022

BASS. XXXVI. Constraining the Local Supermassive Black Hole–Halo Connection with BASS DR2 AGNs

We investigate the connection between supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host dark matter halos in the local universe using the clustering statistics and luminosity function of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the Swift/BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS DR2). By forward-modeling AGN activity into snapshot halo catalogs from N -body simulations, we test a scenario in which SMBH mass correlates with dark matter (sub)halo mass for fixed stellar mass. We compare this to a model absent of this correlation, where stellar mass alone determines the SMBH mass. We find that while both simple models are able to largely reproduce the abundance and overall clustering of AGNs, the model in which black hole mass is tightly correlated with halo mass is preferred by the data by 1.8 σ . When including an independent measurement on the black hole mass–halo mass correlation, this model is preferred by 4.6 σ . We show that the clustering trends with black hole mass can further break the degeneracies between the two scenarios and that our preferred model reproduces the measured clustering differences on one-halo scales between large and small black hole masses. These results indicate that the halo binding energy is fundamentally connected to the growth of SMBHs.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

An effective field theory of quantum mechanical black hole horizons

We develop an effective theory which describes black holes with quantum mechanical horizons that is valid at scales long compared to the Schwarzschild radius but short compared to the lifetime of the black hole. Our formalism allows one to calculate the quantum mechanical effects in scattering processes involving black hole asymptotic states. We point out that the EFT Wightman functions which describe Hawking radiation in the Unruh vacuum are not Planck suppressed and are actually enhanced relative to those in the Boulware vacuum, for which such radiation is absent. We elaborate on this point showing how the non-Planck suppressed effects of Hawking radiation cancel in classical observables.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Primordial gravitational waves from black hole evaporation in standard and nonstandard cosmologies

Gravitons radiated from light, evaporating black holes contribute to the stochastic background of gravitational waves. The spectrum of such emission depends on both the mass and the spin of the black holes, as well as on the redshifting that occurs between the black hole formation and today. This, in turn, depends on the expansion history of the Universe, which is largely unknown and unconstrained at times prior to the synthesis of light elements. Here, we explore the features of the stochastic background of gravitational waves from black hole evaporation under a broad range of possible early cosmological histories. The resulting gravitational wave signals typically peak at very high frequencies, and offer opportunities for proposed ultrahigh-frequency gravitational wave detectors. Lower-frequency peaks are also possible, albeit with a suppressed intensity that is likely well below the threshold of detectability. We find that the largest intensity peaks correspond to cosmologies dominated by fluids with equations of state that have large pressure-to-density ratios. Such scenarios can be constrained on the basis of violation of Δ⁢N eff bounds.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Black hole spin in X-ray binaries: giving uncertainties an $\mathcal{f}$

The two established techniques for measuring black hole spin in X-ray binaries often yield conflicting results, which must be resolved before either method may be deemed robust. In practice, black hole spin measurements based on fitting the accretion disc continuum effectively do not marginalize over the colour-correction factor f col . This factor parametrizes spectral hardening of the disc continuum by the disc atmosphere, whose true properties are poorly constrained. We incorporate reasonable systematic uncertainties in f col into the eight (non-maximal) black hole spin measurements vetted by the disc continuum fitting community. In most cases, an f col uncertainty of ±0.2–0.3 dominates the black hole spin error budget. We go on to demonstrate that plausible departures in f col values from those adopted by the disc continuum fitting practitioners can bring the discrepant black hole spins into agreement with those from iron line modelling. Systematic uncertainties in f col , such as the effects of strong magnetization, should be better understood before dismissing their potentially dominant impact on the black hole spin error budget.

4U 1543–47↗
DOE OSTI2025

Multifrequency Models of Black Hole Photon Rings from Low-luminosity Accretion Disks

Images of black holes encode both astrophysical and gravitational properties. Detecting highly lensed features in images can differentiate between these two effects. We present an accretion disk emission model coupled to the Adaptive Analytical Ray Tracing (AART) code that allows a fast parameter space exploration of black hole photon ring images produced from synchrotron emission from 10 to 670 GHz. As an application, we systematically study several disk models and compute their total flux density, average radii, and optical depth. The model parameters are chosen around fiducial values calibrated to general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations and observations of M87*. For the parameter space studied, we characterize the transition between optically thin and thick regimes and the frequency at which the first photon ring is observable. Our results highlight the need for careful definitions of photon ring radius in the image domain, as in certain models the highly lensed photon ring is dimmer than the direct emission at certain angles. We find that at low frequencies the ring radii are set by the electron temperature, while at higher frequencies the magnetic field strength plays a more significant role, demonstrating how multifrequency analysis can also be used to infer plasma parameters. Lastly, we show how our implementation can qualitatively reproduce multifrequency black hole images from GRMHD simulations when adding time variability to our disk model through Gaussian random fields. This approach provides a new method for simulating observations from the Event Horizon Telescope and the proposed Black Hole Explorer space mission.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Black hole horizon edge partition functions

We extend a formula for 1-loop black hole determinants by Denef, Hartnoll, and Sachdev (DHS) to spinning fields on any (d + 1)-dimensional static spherically symmetric black hole. By carefully analyzing the regularity condition imposed on the Euclidean eigenfunctions, we reveal an unambiguous bulk-edge split in the 1-loop Euclidean partition function for tensor fields of arbitrary integer spin: the bulk part captures the “renormalized” thermal canonical partition function recently discussed in [1]; the edge part is related to quasinormal modes (QNMs) that fail to analytically continue to a subset of Euclidean modes with enhanced fall-offs near the origin. Since the edge part takes the form of a path integral on S d–1 , this suggests that these are associated with degrees of freedom living on the bifurcation surface in the Lorentzian two-sided black hole geometry. For massive higher spin on static BTZ and massive vector on Nariai black holes, we find that the edge partition function is related to the QNMs with lowest overtone numbers.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Dark black holes in the mass gap

Abstract In the standard picture of stellar evolution, pair-instability — the energy loss in stellar cores due to electron-positron pair production — is predicted to prevent the collapse of massive stars into black holes with mass in the range between approximately 50 and 130 solar masses — a range known as the “black hole mass gap”. LIGO and Virgo detection of black hole binary mergers containing one or both black holes with masses in thismass gapthus challenges the standard picture, possibly pointing to an unexpected merger history, unanticipated or poorly understood astrophysical mechanisms, or new physics. Here, we entertain the possibility that a “dark sector” exists, consisting of dark electrons, dark protons, and electromagnetic-like interactions, but no nuclear forces. Dark stars would inevitably form given such dark sector constituents, possibly collapsing into black holes with masses within the mass gap. We study in detail the cooling processes necessary for successful stellar collapse in the dark sector and show that for suitable choices of the particle masses, we indeed predict populating the mass gap with dark sector black holes. In particular, we numerically find that the heavier of the two dark sector massive particles cannot be lighter than, approximately, the visible sector proton for the resulting dark sector black holes to have masses within the mass gap. We discuss constraints on this scenario and how to test it with future, larger black hole merger statistics.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2020

Exploring Primordial Black Holes from the Multiverse with Optical Telescopes

Primordial black holes (PBHs) are a viable candidate for dark matter if the PBH masses are in the currently unconstrained “sublunar” mass range. We revisit the possibility that PBHs were produced by nucleation of false vacuum bubbles during inflation. We show that this scenario can produce a population of PBHs that simultaneously accounts for all dark matter, explains the candidate event in the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) data, and contains both heavy black holes as observed by LIGO and very heavy seeds of supermassive black holes. Here, we demonstrate with numerical studies that future observations of HSC, as well as other optical surveys, such as LSST, will be able to provide a definitive test for this generic PBH formation mechanism if it is the dominant source of dark matter.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗