Exotic compact objects can be difficult to distinguish from black holes in the inspiral phase of the binaries observed by gravitational-wave detectors, but significant differences may be present in the merger and post-merger signal. We introduce a toy model capturing the salient features of binaries of exotic compact objects with compactness below $0.2$, which do not collapse promptly following the merger. We use it to assess their detectability with current and future detectors, and whether they can be distinguished from black hole binaries. We find that the Einstein Telescope (LISA) could observe exotic binaries with total mass $\mathcal{O}(10^2) \ M_{\odot}$ ($10^4-10^6 \ M_{\odot}$), and potentially distinguish them from black hole binaries, throughout the observable Universe, as compared to $z\lesssim 1$ for Advanced LIGO. Moreover, we show that using standard black hole templates for detection could lead to a loss of up to $60\%$ in the signal-to-noise ratio, greatly reducing our chances of observing these signals. Finally, we estimate that if the loudest events in the O1/O2 catalog released by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration were ECO binaries as the ones considered in this paper, they would have left a post-merger signal detectable with model-agnostic searches, making this hypothesis unlikely.
This paper reviews a phenomenological approach to the gravitational lensing by exotic objects such as the Ellis wormhole lens, where exotic lens objects may follow a non-standard form of the equation of state or may obey a modified gravity theory. A gravitational lens model is proposed in the inverse powers of the distance, such that the Schwarzschild lens and exotic lenses can be described in a unified manner as a one parameter family. As observational implications, the magnification, shear, photo-centroid motion and time delay in this lens model are discussed.
Exotic compact objects with physical surfaces a Planckian distance away from where the horizon would have been are inspired in quantum gravity. Most of these objects are defined by a classical spacetime metric, such as boson stars, gravastars and wormholes. We show that these classical objects are gravitationally unstable because accretion of ordinary and dark matter, and gravitational waves forces them to collapse to a black hole by the Hoop conjecture. To avoid collapse, their surface must be a macroscopic distance away from the horizon or they must violate the null energy condition.
In this paper we construct a coordinate atlas in an exotic $\mathbb{R}^{4}$ using Bizaca's construction. The main source for such an atlas is the handle body decomposition of a Casson handle, which of course is an infinite, but periodic, process. The immersion of the end-periodic manifold into $\mathbb{R}^{4}$ is directly related to the exoticness of the $\mathbb{R}^{4}$ and also gives rise naturally to a spinor field. Thus we obtain the interesting result that the simplest exotic $\mathbb{R}^{4}$ generates an extra spinor field by exoticness.
In this paper we will discuss Brans conjecture that exotic smoothness serves as an additional gravitational source naturally arising from the handlebody construction of the exotic $\mathbb{R}^{4}$. We will consider the two possible classes, the large and the small exotic $\mathbb{R}^{4}$. Then we calculate the Einstein-Hilbert action for both exotic $\mathbb{R}^{4}$ to show the apearance of spinor fields. Then we discuss the physical properties of these spinor fields to relate them to fermions. Finally we identify the corresponding 3-manifolds as knot complements of hyperbolic knots, i.e. the …
We present three different theoretically foreseen, but unusual, astrophysical situations where the gravitational lens equation ends up being the same, thus producing a degeneracy problem. These situations are (a) the case of gravitational lensing by exotic stresses (matter violating the weak energy condition and thus having a negative mass, particular cases of wormholes solutions can be used as an example), (b) scalar field gravitational lensing (i.e. when considering the appearance of a scalar charge in the lensing scenario), and (c) gravitational lensing in closed universes (with antipodes).…
We compute the birefringence of light in curved Robertson-Walker spacetimes and propose an exotic formula for redshift based on the internal structure of the spinning photon. We then use the Hubble diagram of supernovae to test this formula.
Some quantum-gravity theories suggest that the absorbing horizon of a classical black hole should be replaced by a reflective surface which is located a microscopic distance above the would-be classical horizon. Instead of an absorbing black hole, the resulting horizonless spacetime describes a reflective exotic compact object. Motivated by this intriguing prediction, in the present paper we explore the physical properties of exotic compact objects which are linearly coupled to stationary bound-state massive scalar field configurations. In particular, solving the Klein-Gordon wave equation for…
We put forward a novel class of exotic celestial objects that can be produced through phase transitions occurred in the primordial Universe. These objects appear as bubbles of stellar sizes and can be dominated by primordial black holes (PBHs). We report that, due to the processes of Hawking radiation and binary evolution of PBHs inside these stellar bubbles, both electromagnetic and gravitational radiations can be emitted that are featured on the gamma-ray spectra and stochastic gravitational waves (GWs). Our results reveal that, depending on the mass distribution, the exotic stellar bubbles …
Exotic compact objects, horizonless spacetimes with reflective properties, have intriguingly been suggested by some quantum-gravity models as alternatives to classical black-hole spacetimes. A remarkable feature of spinning horizonless compact objects with reflective boundary conditions is the existence of a {\it discrete} set of critical surface radii, $\{r_{\text{c}}({\bar a};n)\}^{n=\infty}_{n=1}$, which can support spatially regular static ({\it marginally-stable}) scalar field configurations (here ${\bar a}\equiv J/M^2$ is the dimensionless angular momentum of the exotic compact object). …
In the context of higher dimensional braneworld scenario, we have argued that the occurrence of horizonless exotic compact objects, as an alternative to classical black holes, are more natural. These exotic compact objects carry a distinctive signature of the higher dimension, namely a tidal charge parameter, inherited from the projection of the higher dimensional Weyl tensor onto the four dimensional spacetime we live in. Due to the absence of any horizon, rotating exotic compact objects are often unstable because of superradiance. Interestingly, these higher dimensional exotic compact object…
In this work we study and compare the features of gravitational entropy near the throat of transversable wormholes formed by exotic matter and wormholes in galactic halos. We have verified that gravitational entropy and entropy density of these wormholes in regions near their throats are indistinguishable for objects of same throat, despite the fact they are described by different metrics and by distinct energy-momentum tensors. We have found that the gravitational entropy density diverges near the throat for both cases, probably due to a non-trivial topology at this point, however allowing th…
Gravitational waves (GWs) from presumed binary black hole mergers are now being detected on a regular basis with the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo interferometers. Exotic compact objects (ECOs) have been proposed that differ from Kerr black holes, and which could leave an imprint upon the GW signal in a variety of ways. Here we consider excitations of ECOs during inspiral, which may occur when the monotonically increasing GW frequency matches a resonant frequency of an exotic object. This causes orbital energy to be taken away, leading to a speed-up of the orbital phase evolution. We show t…
The event horizon of a black hole in general relativity absorbs all infalling radiation. Any observation of the contrary would immediately challenge the expectation that astrophysical black holes are described by the vacuum Kerr geometry. If a putative black hole does reflect part of the ingoing radiation, its quasinormal mode structure is drastically altered. Low frequency modes can be introduced that are resonantly excited during the inspiral of a binary system. We study the resulting phase shift of the gravitational wave signal. Building on neutron star results, we obtain a model-independen…
Gravitational lens models with negative convergence(surface mass density projected onto the lens plane) inspired by modified gravity theories, exotic matter and energy have been recently discussed in such a way that a static and spherically-symmetric modified spacetime metric depends on the inverse distance to the power of positive $n$(n=1 for Schwarzschild metric, n=2 for Ellis wormhole) in the weak-field approximation [Kitamura, Nakajima and Asada, PRD 87, 027501 (2013)], and it has been shown that demagnification of images could occur for $n>1$ lens models associated with exotic matter (and…
We investigate the caustic topologies for binary gravitational lenses made up of two objects whose gravitational potential declines as $1/r^n$. With $n<1$ this corresponds to power-law dust distributions like the singular isothermal sphere. The $n>1$ regime can be obtained with some violations of the energy conditions, one famous example being the Ellis wormhole. Gravitational lensing provides a natural arena to distinguish and identify such exotic objects in our Universe. We find that there are still three topologies for caustics as in the standard Schwarzschild binary lens, with the main nov…
Horizonless spacetimes describing highly compact exotic objects with reflecting (instead of absorbing) surfaces have recently attracted much attention from physicists and mathematicians as possible quantum-gravity alternatives to canonical classical black-hole spacetimes. Interestingly, it has recently been proved that spinning compact objects with angular momenta in the sub-critical regime ${\bar a}\equiv J/M^2\leq1$ are characterized by an infinite countable set of surface radii, $\{r_{\text{c}}({\bar a};n)\}^{n=\infty}_{n=1}$, that can support asymptotically flat static configurations made …
Exotic objects such as the Ellis wormhole are expected to act as gravitational lenses. Much like their nonexotic counterparts, information about these lenses can be found by considering the strong and weak lensing fields they induce. In this work, we consider how weak gravitational lensing flexion can provide information beyond that of shear. We find that directional flexion can distinguish between the case of a positive or negative convergence where directional shear cannot, and therefore can provide a unique lensing signature for objects with an Ellis wormhole-type metric. We also consider c…
Gravitational waves from binary coalescences provide one of the cleanest signatures of the nature of compact objects. It has been recently argued that the post-merger ringdown waveform of exotic ultracompact objects is initially identical to that of a black-hole, and that putative corrections at the horizon scale will appear as secondary pulses after the main burst of radiation. Here we extend this analysis in three important directions: (i) we show that this result applies to a large class of exotic compact objects with a photon sphere for generic orbits in the test-particle limit; (ii) we in…
We study several aspects of the extended thermodynamics of BTZ black holes with thermodynamic mass $M=αm + γ\frac{j}{\ell}$ and angular momentum $J = αj + γ\ell m$, for general values of the parameters $(α, γ)$ ranging from regular ($α=1, γ=0$) to exotic ($α=0, γ=1$). We show that there exist two distinct behaviours for the black holes, one when $α> γ$ ("mostly regular"), and the other when $γ< α$ ("mostly exotic"). We find that the Smarr formula holds for all $(α, γ)$. We derive the corresponding thermodynamic volumes, which we find to be positive provided $α$ and $γ$ satisfy a certain constr…
Spinning horizonless compact objects may be unstable against an 'ergoregion instability'. We investigate this mechanism for electromagnetic perturbations of ultracompact Kerr-like objects with a reflecting surface, extending previous (numerical and analytical) work limited to the scalar case. We derive an analytical result for the frequency and the instability time scale of unstable modes which is valid at small frequencies. We argue that our analysis can be directly extended to gravitational perturbations of exotic compact objects in the black-hole limit. The instability for electromagnetic a…
In this paper we employ Tolman VII solution with exotic matter that may be present in the extremely dense core of compact objects. The Tolman VII solution, an exact analytic solution to the spherically symmetric, static Einstein field equations with a perfect fluid source, has many characteristics that make it interesting for modeling high density stellar astronomical objects. For our purpose we use generalized non-linear equation of state which may incorporate exotic matter along with dust, radiation and dark energy. The equation of state (EoS) has a linear contribution comprising quark/radia…
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 $ψ_4$ 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 mat…
Motivated by the lack of a general parametrization for exotic compact objects, we construct a class of perturbative solutions valid for small (but otherwise generic) multipolar deviations from a Schwarzschild metric in general relativity. We introduce two classes of exotic compact objects, with "soft" and "hard" hair, for which the curvature at the surface is respectively comparable to or much larger than that at the corresponding black-hole horizon. We extend the Hartle-Thorne formalism to relax the assumption of equatorial symmetry and to include deformations induced by multipole moments hig…
Current gravitational wave (GW) detections rely on the existence of libraries of theoretical waveforms. Consequently, finding new physics with GWs requires libraries of non-standard models, which are computationally demanding. We discuss how deep learning frameworks can be used to generate new waveforms "learned" from a simulation dataset obtained, say, from numerical relativity simulations. Concretely, we use the WaveGAN architecture of a generative adversarial network (GAN). As a proof of concept we provide this neural network (NN) with a sample of ($>500$) waveforms from the collisions of e…
We examine a gravitational lens model inspired by modified gravity theories and exotic matter and energy. We study an asymptotically flat, static, and spherically symmetric spacetime that is modified in such a way that the spacetime metric depends on the inverse distance to the power of positive $n$ in the weak-field approximation. It is shown analytically and numerically that there is a lower limit on the source angular displacement from the lens object to get demagnification. Demagnifying gravitational lenses could appear, provided the source position $β$ and the power $n$ satisfy $β> 2/(n+1…
To describe dark energy we introduce a fluid model with no free parameter on the microscopic level. The constituents of this fluid are massless particles which are a dynamical realisation of the unextended $D=(3+1)$ Galilei algebra. These particles are exotic as they live in an enlarged phase space. Their only interaction is with gravity. A minimal coupling to the gravitational field, satisfying Einstein's equivalence principle, leads to a dynamically active gravitational mass density of either sign. A two-component model containing matter (baryonic and dark) and dark energy leads, through the…
At the dawn of a golden age for gravitational wave astronomy, we must leave no stone unturned in our quest for new phenomena beyond our current understanding of General Relativity (GR), particle physics and nuclear physics. In this paper we discuss gravitational echoes from ultracompact stars. We restrict our analysis to exact solutions of Einstein field equations in GR that are supported by physically motivated equations of state (EoS), and in particular we impose the constraint of causality. Our main conclusion is that ultracompact objects supported by physical EoS are not able to generate g…
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 heat…
Classical phenomenological aspects of acoustic perturbations on a draining bathtub geometry where a surface with reflectivity $\mathcal{R}$ is set at a small distance from the would-be acoustic horizon, which is excised, are addressed. Like most exotic compact objects featuring an ergoregion but not a horizon, this model is prone to instabilities when $|\mathcal{R}|^2\approx 1$. However, stability can be attained for sufficiently slow drains when $|\mathcal{R}|^2\lesssim70\%$. It is shown that the superradiant scattering of acoustic waves is more effective when their frequency approaches one o…
Exotic compact objects (ECOs) have recently become an exciting research subject, since they are speculated to have a special response to the incident gravitational waves (GWs) that leads to GW echoes. We show that energy carried by GWs can easily cause the event horizon to form out of a static ECO --- leaving no echo signals towards spatial infinity. To show this, we use the ingoing Vaidya spacetime and take into account the back reaction due to incoming GWs. Demanding that an ECO does not collapse into a black hole puts an upper bound on the compactness of the ECO, at the cost of less distinc…
We present a static, spherically symmetric, traversable wormhole solution to multimetric gravity which is sustained by only non-exotic matter, i.e., matter which satisfies all energy conditions. The possibility of this solution arises from the fact that under certain conditions the multimetric gravitational field equations reduce to the Einstein equations, but with a negative effective gravitational constant. We show that the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner mass of this wormhole vanishes, so that it appears massless to observers in the asymptotically flat spacetime. We finally speculate on the feasibili…
Gravitational wave astronomy provides an unprecedented opportunity to test the nature of black holes and search for exotic, compact alternatives. Recent studies have shown that exotic compact objects (ECOs) can ring down in a manner similar to black holes, but can also produce a sequence of distinct pulses resembling the initial ringdown. These "echoes" would provide definite evidence for the existence of ECOs. In this work we study the generation of these echoes in a generic, parametrized model for the ECO, using Green's functions. We show how to reprocess radiation in the near-horizon region…
Accurate waveform models describing the complete evolution of compact binaries are crucial for the maximum likelihood detection framework, testing the predictions of General Relativity (GR) and investigating the possibility of an alternative theory of gravity. Deviations from GR could manifest in subtle variations of the numerical value of the GW signal's post-Newtonian (PN) phasing coefficients. Once the search pipelines confirm an unambiguous signal detection, deviations of the signal phasing coefficients at various PN orders are routinely measured and reported. As the search templates thems…
Gravitational-wave astronomy can give us access to the structure of black holes, potentially probing microscopic or even Planckian corrections at the horizon scale, as those predicted by some quantum-gravity models of exotic compact objects. A generic feature of these models is the replacement of the horizon by a reflective surface. Objects with these properties are prone to the so-called ergoregion instability when they spin sufficiently fast. We investigate in detail a simple model consisting of scalar perturbations of a Kerr geometry with a reflective surface near the horizon. The instabili…
Gravitational wave astronomy is an emerging observational discipline that expands the astrophysical messengers astronomers can use to probe cosmic phenomena. The gravitational waveform from a source encodes the astrophysical properties and the dynamical motion of mass within the system; this is particularly evident in the case of binaries, where the overall amplitude of the system scales with physical parameters like mass and distance, but the phase structure of the waveform encodes the orbital evolution of the system. Strongly gravitating systems can show interesting and unusual orbital traje…
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 backrea…
In this work we implement the Minimal Geometric Deformation method to obtain the isotropic sector and the decoupler matter content of any anisotropic solution of the Einstein field equations with cosmological constant in $2+1$ dimensional space--times. We obtain that the solutions of both sectors can be expressed analytically in terms of the metric functions of the original anisotropic solutions instead of formal integral as in its $3+1$ counterpart. As a particular example we study a regular black hole solution and we show that, depending on the sign of the cosmological constant, the solution…
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 bl…
We parameterize the core of compact spherical star configurations by a mass ($m_x$) and a radius ($r_x$) and study the resulting admissible areas in the total-mass vs. total-radius plane. The employed fiducial equation-of-state models of the corona at radii $r \ge r_x$ and pressures $p \le p_x = p(r = r_x)$ are that (i) of constant sound velocity and (ii) a proxy of DY$Δ$ DD-ME2 provided by Buchdahl's exactly solvable ansatz. The core ($r < r_x$) may contain any type of material, e.g. Standard-Model matter with unspecified equation of state or/and an unspecified Dark-Matter admixture. Employin…
Sagittarius A* near-infrared flares polarization as a probe of space-time I: Non-rotating exotic compact objects
CENTRA, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto（波尔图大学工程学院）；CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico-IST, Universidade de Lisboa-UL（里斯本大学高等技术学院物理系）；Institute of Physics, University of Tartu（塔尔图大学物理研究所）；Departamento de Física Teórica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid（马德里康普顿斯大学理论物理系）
We study the possibility of shielding a regular extremal black hole by means of a matter thin-shell. While the surface energy density $σ$ on the static shell is negative, the tangential pressures $p$ are positive, both of them being finite when the shell approaches the black hole horizon. The Darmois-Israel junction conditions are used to find $σ$ and $p$ in terms of the radius $a$ of the shell. The surface gravitational energy $E_{S}$ is computed, keeping track of the pressure contribution. The stability conditions are briefly investigated.
The nonsymmetric gravitational theory predicts an acceleration law that modifies the Newtonian law of attraction between particles. For weak fields a fit to the flat rotation curves of galaxies is obtained in terms of the mass (mass-to-light ratio M/L) of galaxies. The fits assume that the galaxies are not dominated by exotic dark matter. The equations of motion for test particles reduce for weak gravitational fields to the GR equations of motion and the predictions for the solar system and the binary pulsar PSR 1913+16 agree with the observations. The gravitational lensing of clusters of gala…
We study the response of a static Unruh-DeWitt detector outside an exotic compact object (ECO) with a general reflective boundary condition in 3+1 dimensions. The horizonless ECO, whose boundary is extremely close to the would-be event horizon, acts as a black hole mimicker. We find that the response rate is notably distinct from the black hole case, even when the ECO boundary is perfectly absorbing. For a (partially) reflective ECO boundary, we find resonance structures in the response rate that depend on the different locations of the ECO boundary and those of the detector. We provide a deta…
We discuss the energy loss due to gravitational radiation of binaries composed of exotic objects whose horizon boundary conditions are replaced with reflective ones. Our focus is on the extreme mass-ratio inspirals, in which the central heavier black hole is replaced with an exotic compact object. We show, in this case, a modulation of the energy loss rate depending on the evolving orbital frequency occurs and leads to two different types of modifications to the gravitational wave phase evolution; the oscillating part directly corresponding to the modulation in the energy flux, and the non-osc…
