The detection of a gamma-ray burst (GRB) in the solar neighborhood would have very important implications for GRB phenomenology. The leading theories for cosmological GRBs would not be able to explain such events. The final bursts of evaporating primordial black holes (PBHs), however, would be a natural explanation for local GRBs. We present a novel technique that can constrain the distance to GRBs using detections from widely separated, non-imaging spacecraft. This method can determine the actual distance to the burst if it is local. We applied this method to constrain distances to a sample of 36 short-duration GRBs detected by the Interplanetary Network (IPN) that show observational properties that are expected from PBH evaporations. These bursts have minimum possible distances in the 10(13)-10(18) cm (7-10(5) au) range, which are consistent with the expected PBH energetics and with a possible origin in the solar neighborhood, although none of the bursts can be unambiguously demonstrated to be local. Assuming that these bursts are real PBH events, we estimate lower limits on the PBH burst evaporation rate in the solar neighborhood.

The aim of this thesis is to reconsider energy extraction from black hole magnetospheres, and more specifically the Blandford-Znajek (BZ) process from an effective field theory (EFT) perspective. Superradiant instabilities of scalar and vector bound states in the presence of a rotating black hole will be reviewed when the inverse mass of the black hole is much smaller than the Compton wavelength of the bound state particle. Two different matching calculations will be described for the vector bound state case and the overall decay rate will be compared. Force-free electrodynamics will be motivated and discussed in the context of the BZ process. Using a perturbation expansion, the Blandford-Znajek process will be reviewed up to second order in the rotation parameter. The absolute-space/universal-time (3+1) viewpoint will be discussed and applied to the BZ process and an EFT-like description will be discussed when the black hole horizon is parametrically small. Using differential forms, a simplified framework for the BZ process will be introduced in the (3+1) formalism and the field strength F will be simplified in the slow-rotation limit up to first-order in the rotation parameter. Finally, the Blandford-Znajek process will be considered as a superradiant process in the massive vector limit and the total energy flux in this (new) regime will be compared to the known BZ energy flux. / Graduate

No description available.

In recent work by Kraus and Wilczek, it is first uncovered that small deviations from exact thermality in Hawking radiation have the capacity to carry off the maximum information content of a black hole. It is summarized, simplified and extended in this dissertation. This goes a considerable way toward resolving a long-standing “information loss paradox.” / Graduate

The sporadic accretion following the tidal disruption of a star by a super-massive black hole (TDE) leads to a bright. UV and soft X-ray flare in the galactic nucleus. The gas and dust surrounding the black hole responses to such a flare with an echo in emission lines and infrared emission. In this paper, we report the detection of long fading mid-IR emission lasting up to 14 years after the flare in four TDE candidates with transient coronal lines using the WISE public data release. We estimate that the reprocessed mid-IR luminosities are in the range between 4 x 10(42) and 2 x 10(43) erg s(-1) and dust temperature in the range of 570-800 K when WISE first detected these sources three to five years after the flare. Both luminosity and dust temperature decrease with time. We interpret the mid-IR emission as the infrared echo of the tidal disruption flare. We estimate the UV luminosity at the peak flare to be 1 to 30 times 10(44) erg s(-1) and that for. warm dust masses to be. in the range of 0.05-1.3 M-circle dot within a few parsecs. Our results suggest that the. mid-infrared echo is a general signature of TDE in the gas-rich environment.

In this thesis we exploit the setup of AdS3/CFT2 holography, and in particular the D1D5 two-dimensional CFT, to describe states dual to geometries relevant for the \fuzzball" proposal for the description of six-dimensional black hole microstates. Precise holographic dualities between CFT and bulk geometric objects are established and checked, both for 2 and 3-charge states. In particular, VEVs of CFT operators of small conformal dimension are checked to encode deviations from AdS3 geometry near the spacetime boundary. 4-point functions of the \heavy-heavy-light-light" type are also considered and matching is found between CFT and bulk computations via the usual AdS/CFT prescription, with the heavy states being dual to (simple) microstate geometries. In this context, the issue of the presence of spurious singularities at leading order in the large N limit is assessed and cancellations are found even without considering sub-leading corrections, at the cost of considering the full detail of the D1D5 CFT (i.e. including the Virasoro blocks of operators of small dimension charged under the internal SU(2)L SU(2)R R-symmetry group). Finally, more complicated 4-point functions, involving operators in the twisted sector of the CFT, are computed and the results are checked against known results in the literature with the aim of verifying the robustness of the (new) techniques used. Supersymmetric Ward identities are also derived, and checked for some cases, between correlators written in terms of bosons and in terms of fermions.

No description available.

This thesis addresses the open questions of providing a cosmological model describing an accelerated expanding Universe without violating the energy conditions or a model that contributes to the physical interpretation of the dark energy. The former case is analyzed considering a closed model based on a regular lattice of black holes using the Einstein equation in vacuum. In the latter case I will connect the dark energy to the Shan-Chen equation of state. A comparison between these two proposals is then discussed. As a complementary topic I will discuss the motion of test particles in a general relativistic spacetime undergoing friction effects. This is modeled following the formalism of Poynting-Robertson whose link with the Stokes’ formula is presented. The cases of geodesic and non-geodesic motion are compared and contrasted for Schwarzschild, Tolman, Pant-Sah and Friedman metrics respectively.

The rate of tidal disruption events (TDEs), R-TDE, is predicted to depend on stellar conditions near the super-massive black hole (SMBH), which are on difficult-to-measure sub-parsec scales. We test whether R-TDE depends on kpc-scale global galaxy properties, which are observable. We concentrate on stellar surface mass density, Sigma M-*, and velocity dispersion, sigma(nu), which correlate with the stellar density and velocity dispersion of the stars around the SMBH. We consider 35 TDE candidates, with and without known X-ray emission. The hosts range from star-forming to quiescent to quiescent with strong Balmer absorption lines. The last (often with post-starburst spectra) are overrepresented in our sample by a factor of 35(-17)(+21) or 18(-7)(+8), depending on the strength of the H delta absorption line. For a subsample of hosts with homogeneous measurements, Sigma M-* = 10(9)-10(10) M-circle dot/kpc(2), higher on average than for a volume-weighted control sample of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies with similar redshifts and stellar masses. This is because (1) most of the TDE hosts here are quiescent galaxies, which tend to have higher Sigma M-* than the star-forming galaxies that dominate the control, and (2) the star-forming hosts have higher average Sigma M-* than the star-forming control. There is also a weak suggestion that TDE hosts have lower sigma(nu) than for the quiescent control. Assuming that R-TDE infinity Sigma M-*(alpha) x sigma(beta)(nu), and applying a statistical model to the TDE hosts and control sample, we estimate (alpha) over cap = 0.9 +/- 0.2 and (beta) over cap = -1.0 +/- 0.6. This is broadly consistent with RTDE being tied to the dynamical relaxation of stars surrounding the SMBH.

In this thesis we study near-horizon geometries of extreme black holes. We first consider stationary extreme black hole solutions to the Einstein-Yang-Mills theory with a compact semi-simple gauge group in four dimensions, allowing for a negative cosmological constant. We prove that any axisymmetric black hole of this kind possesses a near-horizon AdS2 symmetry and deduce its near-horizon geometry must be that of the abelian embedded extreme Kerr-Newman (AdS) black hole. We show that the near-horizon geometry of any static black hole is a direct product of AdS2 and a constant curvature space. We then consider near-horizon geometry in Einstein gravity coupled to a Maxwell field and a massive complex scalar field, with a cosmological constant. We prove that assuming non-zero coupling between the Maxwell and the scalar fields, there exists no solution with a compact horizon in any dimensions where the massive scalar is non-trivial. This result generalises to any scalar potential which is a monotonically increasing function of the modulus of the complex scalar. Next we determine the most general three-dimensional vacuum spacetime with a negative cosmological constant containing a non-singular Killing horizon. We show that the general solution with a spatially compact horizon possesses a second commuting Killing field and deduce that it must be related to the BTZ black hole (or its near-horizon geometry) by a diffeomorphism. We show there is a general class of asymptotically AdS3 extreme black holes with arbitrary charges with respect to one of the asymptotic-symmetry Virasoro algebras and vanishing charges with respect to the other. We interpret these as descendants of the extreme BTZ black hole. However descendants of the non-extreme BTZ black hole are absent from our general solution with a non-degenerate horizon. We then show that the first order deformation along transverse null geodesics about any near-horizon geometry with compact cross-sections always admits a finite-parameter family of solutions as the most general solution. As an application, we consider the first order expansion from the near-horizon geometry of the extreme Kerr black hole. We uncover a local uniqueness theorem by demonstrating that the only possible black hole solutions which admit a U(1) symmetry are gauge equivalent to the first order expansion of the extreme Kerr solution itself. We then investigate the first order expansion from the near-horizon geometry of the extreme self-dual Myers-Perry black hole in 5D. The only solutions which inherit the enhanced SU(2) X U(1) symmetry and are compatible with black holes correspond to the first order expansion of the extreme self-dual Myers-Perry black hole itself and the extreme J = 0 Kaluza-Klein black hole. These are the only known black holes to possess this near-horizon geometry. If only U(1) X U(1) symmetry is assumed in first order, we find that the most general solution is a three-parameter family which is more general than the two known black hole solutions. This hints the possibility of the existence of new black holes.