There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

On September 14, 2015 at 09:50:45 UTC the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory simultaneously observed a transient gravitational-wave signal. The signal sweeps upwards in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz with a peak gravitational-wave strain of 1.0×10(-21). It matches the waveform predicted by general relativity for the inspiral and merger of a pair of black holes and the ringdown of the resulting single black hole. The signal was observed with a matched-filter signal-to-noise ratio of 24 and a false alarm rate estimated to be less than 1 event per 203,000 years, equivalent to a significance greater than 5.1σ. The source lies at a luminosity distance of 410(-180)(+160)  Mpc corresponding to a redshift z=0.09(-0.04)(+0.03). In the source frame, the initial black hole masses are 36(-4)(+5)M⊙ and 29(-4)(+4)M⊙, and the final black hole mass is 62(-4)(+4)M⊙, with 3.0(-0.5)(+0.5)M⊙c(2) radiated in gravitational waves. All uncertainties define 90% credible intervals. These observations demonstrate the existence of binary stellar-mass black hole systems. This is the first direct detection of gravitational waves and the first observation of a binary black hole merger.

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The Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger

QUANTUM gravitational effects are usually ignored in calculations of the formation and evolution of black holes. The justification for this is that the radius of curvature of space-time outside the event horizon is very large compared to the Planck length (Għ/c3)1/2 ≈ 10−33 cm, the length scale on which quantum fluctuations of the metric are expected to be of order unity. This means that the energy density of particles created by the gravitational field is small compared to the space-time curvature. Even though quantum effects may be small locally, they may still, however, add up to produce a significant effect over the lifetime of the Universe ≈ 1017 s which is very long compared to the Planck time ≈ 10−43 s. The purpose of this letter is to show that this indeed may be the case: it seems that any black hole will create and emit particles such as neutrinos or photons at just the rate that one would expect if the black hole was a body with a temperature of (κ/2π) (ħ/2k) ≈ 10−6 (M/M)K where κ is the surface gravity of the black hole1. As a black hole emits this thermal radiation one would expect it to lose mass. This in turn would increase the surface gravity and so increase the rate of emission. The black hole would therefore have a finite life of the order of 1071 (M/M)−3 s. For a black hole of solar mass this is much longer than the age of the Universe. There might, however, be much smaller black holes which were formed by fluctuations in the early Universe2. Any such black hole of mass less than 1015 g would have evaporated by now. Near the end of its life the rate of emission would be very high and about 1030 erg would be released in the last 0.1 s. This is a fairly small explosion by astronomical standards but it is equivalent to about 1 million 1 Mton hydrogen bombs. It is often said that nothing can escape from a black hole. But in 1974, Stephen Hawking realized that, owing to quantum effects, black holes should emit particles with a thermal distribution of energies — as if the black hole had a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. In addition to putting black-hole thermodynamics on a firmer footing, this discovery led Hawking to postulate 'black hole explosions', as primordial black holes end their lives in an accelerating release of energy.

Black Hole Explosions

Gravitational Field of a Spinning Mass as an Example of Algebraically Special Metrics

In the classical theory black holes can only absorb and not emit particles. However it is shown that quantum mechanical effects cause black holes to create and emit particles as if they were hot bodies with temperature\(\frac{{h\kappa }}{{2\pi k}} \approx 10^{ - 6} \left( {\frac{{M_ \odot }}{M}} \right){}^ \circ K\) where κ is the surface gravity of the black hole. This thermal emission leads to a slow decrease in the mass of the black hole and to its eventual disappearance: any primordial black hole of mass less than about 1015 g would have evaporated by now. Although these quantum effects violate the classical law that the area of the event horizon of a black hole cannot decrease, there remains a Generalized Second Law:S+1/4A never decreases whereS is the entropy of matter outside black holes andA is the sum of the surface areas of the event horizons. This shows that gravitational collapse converts the baryons and leptons in the collapsing body into entropy. It is tempting to speculate that this might be the reason why the Universe contains so much entropy per baryon.

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Particle Creation by Black Holes

Spacetimes with horizons show a resemblance to thermodynamic systems and one can associate the notions of temperature and entropy with them. In the case of Einstein-Hilbert gravity, it is possible to interpret Einstein's equations as the thermodynamic identity TdS=dE+PdV for a spherically symmetric spacetime and thus provide a thermodynamic route to understand the dynamics of gravity. We study this approach further and show that the field equations for the Lanczos-Lovelock action in a spherically symmetric spacetime can also be expressed as TdS=dE+PdV with S and E given by expressions previously derived in the literature by other approaches. The Lanczos-Lovelock Lagrangians are of the form L=Q{sub a}{sup bcd}R{sup a}{sub bcd} with {nabla}{sub b}Q{sub a}{sup bcd}=0. In such models, the expansion of Q{sub a}{sup bcd} in terms of the derivatives of the metric tensor determines the structure of the theory and higher order terms can be interpreted as quantum corrections to Einstein gravity. Our result indicates a deep connection between the thermodynamics of horizons and the allowed quantum corrections to standard Einstein gravity, and shows that the relation TdS=dE+PdV has a greater domain of validity than Einstein's field equations.

Thermodynamic route to field equations in Lanczos-Lovelock gravity

Einstein's equations as a thermodynamic identity: The Cases of stationary axisymmetric horizons and evolving spherically symmetric horizons

In Einstein's gravity, the entropy of horizons is proportional to their area. Several arguments given in the literature suggest that, in this context, both area and entropy should be quantized with an equally-spaced spectrum for large quantum numbers. But in more general theories (like, for example, in the black hole solutions of Gauss-Bonnet or Lanczos-Lovelock gravity) the horizon entropy is not proportional to area and the question arises as to which of the two (if at all) will have this property. We give a general argument that in all Lanczos-Lovelock theories of gravity, it is the entropy that has an equally-spaced spectrum. In the case of Gauss-Bonnet gravity, we use the asymptotic form of quasinormal mode frequencies to explicitly demonstrate this result. Hence, the concept of a quantum of area in Einstein-Hilbert gravity needs to be replaced by a concept of quantum of entropy in a more general context.

Is gravitational entropy quantized

We have derived the differential equation governing the evolution of the photon sphere for dynamical black hole spacetimes with or without spherical symmetry. Numerical solution of the same depicting evolution of the photon sphere has been presented for Vaidya, Reissner-Nordstr\"om-Vaidya and de Sitter Vaidya spacetimes. It has been pointed out that evolution of the photon sphere depends crucially on the validity of the null energy condition by the infalling matter and may present an observational window to even test it through black hole shadow. We have also presented the evolution of the photon sphere for slowly rotating Kerr-Vaidya spacetime and associated structure of black hole shadow. Finally, the effective graviton metric for Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity has been presented, and the graviton sphere has been contrasted with the photon sphere in this context.

Understanding photon sphere and black hole shadow in dynamically evolving spacetimes

We study the classical second law of black hole thermodynamics, for Lovelock theories (other than general relativity), in arbitrary dimensions. Using the standard formula for black hole entropy, we construct scenarios involving the merger of two black holes in which the entropy instantaneously decreases. Our construction involves a Kaluza-Klein compactification down to a dimension in which one of the Lovelock terms is topological. We discuss some open issues in the definition of the second law which might be used to remove this entropy decrease.

Sudipta Sarkar

Papers

Thermodynamic route to field equations in Lanczos-Lovelock gravity

Einstein's equations as a thermodynamic identity: The Cases of stationary axisymmetric horizons and evolving spherically symmetric horizons

Is gravitational entropy quantized

Understanding photon sphere and black hole shadow in dynamically evolving spacetimes

Second Law Violations in Lovelock Gravity for Black Hole Mergers