Search Talks

Overtones are known to improve the performance of fits to the ringdown, both in numerical-relativity simulations and gravitational-wave observations. Although the overtone frequencies are a concrete prediction of general relativity, it remains an open question whether they are excited to the extent that fits to data would suggest. In this talk, after a brief introduction to the ringdown, overtones, and black-hole spectroscopy, I will present work where we take a pragmatic approach and investigate the practical utility of each additional overtone in extracting information from the ringdown. We look at the dependence of the ringdown start time on the number of overtones, and the feasibility of detecting deviations from general relativity in the ringdown frequencies. We suggest that there is no clear highest-excited overtone, but rather the utility of each additional overtone decreases compared to the one before. Finally, we perform Bayesian parameter estimation (as opposed to least-squares fits) to obtain posterior distributions on the overtone amplitudes and phases, allowing us to investigate their correlation structure. Due to strong correlations it becomes increasingly hard to measure individual amplitudes and phases for the highest overtones. However, we find that the joint measurement of overtone amplitudes (i.e., the correlation structure itself) is sensitive to the frequencies and decay times of even the highest overtones, possibly offering an avenue to perform consistency tests with general relativity.

When performing the gravitational path integral, multiple saddles can contribute to a given computation. In black hole thermodynamics, one encounters infinitely many critical points of the action, most of which are complex. Surprisingly, the sum over these saddles diverges in spacetime dimensions greater than three, and the on-shell action is not even bounded from below. Starting from the Lorentzian gravitational path integral, we show that only a finite number of saddles actually contribute. Interestingly, as the temperature decreases, the number of relevant saddles increases, reproducing known results from JT gravity coupled to gauge fields in the extremal limit. We also discuss the implications of this approach for the computation of supersymmetric indices.

In this talk, I will describe recent developments in our understanding of edge modes associated to subregions in gauge theories, leveraging their realization as reference frames. I will begin with the picture in classical Maxwell theory, where I will introduce the concept of subregional Goldstone mode as a relational observable parametrizing the corner symmetry group. With this as a guiding principle, I will then move on to non-Abelian lattice gauge theory, where we can carry out the construction directly at the quantum level. I will characterize a novel hierarchy of relational subregional algebras, which encompasses the so-called electric and magnetic center algebras usually considered in the literature, for which we provide a new general definition. This leads to corresponding entropy hierarchies. Interestingly, some of the relational algebras can be factors, and so the physical Hilbert space factorizes. Except in the Abelian case, the subregional Goldstone mode is generically only defined on a subspace of the Hilbert space, stemming from the incompleteness of certain edge mode frames. I will conclude with on-going efforts to have a quantum description of edge modes in the continuum, employing algebraic QFT methods. An overarching theme will be the relation between the subregional Goldstone mode and the asymptotic soft sector of the theory. 

Defining thermodynamic ensembles for gravitational systems is tied to specifying boundary conditions. In this talk I'll first briefly review how introducing a Dirichlet timelike boundary clarifies thermodynamics of de Sitter space. Then I'll discuss geometries subjected to conformal boundary conditions, where the conformal class of the boundary metric and the trace of the extrinsic curvature K are held fixed. In the high temperature limit the series of subextensive terms in the free energy are compared to predictions from thermal effective field theory, and we observe agreement in all considered cases. Ensembles with negative K include solutions with cosmic-type horizons, where the system boundary is smaller than the horizon. In some regions of parameter space, these solutions are the dominant phase and are necessary for consistency with thermal effective field theory.

Uncovering the origins of binary black holes through gravitational-wave detections provides a powerful probe of the evolution, interactions, and environments of massive stars. Stellar theory predicts a forbidden range of black-hole masses between 50-130Msun due to pair-instability supernovae, but evidence for such a gap in the mass distribution in previous gravitational-wave studies has proved elusive. In this talk, I will present our latest observational evidence of the pair-instability gap in the distribution of black hole masses. While the gap is not present in the distribution of primary masses (the bigger of the two black holes in a binary system), it appears unambiguously in the distribution of secondary masses. The location of the gap lines up well with a previously identified transition in the binary black-hole spin distribution; binaries with primary components in the gap tend to spin more rapidly than those below the gap. We interpret these findings as evidence for a subpopulation of hierarchical mergers: binaries where the primary component is the product of a previous black-hole merger and thus populates the gap. If time permits, I will also highlight the signatures of hierarchical mergers that not only populate the mass gap but also present at lower mass.

Most physical theories assume that spacetime is four dimensional, a claim strongly supported by high precision accelerator and cosmological measurements. It is also well known that at the Planck scale our quantum theories, and perhaps physics itself, break down. This raises a natural question: what happens to spacetime at the smallest scales, where quantum fluctuations may alter the familiar four dimensional structure? What is the dimension of quantum spacetime? How should we understand topology in this regime, and can matter and spacetime topology be defined independently? My talk will present possible answers to these questions through the lens of Causal Dynamical Triangulations.