Talks

The Kerr metric of vacuum general relativity is expected to describe astrophysical black holes. Boson stars, on the other hand, are one of the simplest gravitating solitons, suggested as astrophysical compact objects, black holes mimickers and as dark matter candidates. Kerr black holes with scalar hair, found in [1], continuously interpolate between these two types of, per se, physically interesting solutions. I will describe the construction of these solutions and discuss theoretical, astrophysical and high energy physics aspects and challenges for Kerr black holes with scalar hair.

References:

[1] Kerr black holes with scalar hair, Carlos A. R. Herdeiro, Eugen Radu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112 (2014) 221101; e-Print: arXiv:1403.2757

[2] A new spin on black hole hair, C. Herdeiro, E. Radu, International Journal of Modern Physics D 23 (2014) 1442014; e-Print: arXiv: 1405.3696;

[3] Construction and physical properties of Kerr black holes with scalar hair, C. Herdeiro and E. Radu, arXiv:1501.04319 [gr-qc]; Focus Issue on "Black holes and fundamental fields" to appear in Classical and Quantum Gravity

Water Stress:
Seeking Solutions in the
Unusual Properties of Water

Water is ubiquitous, but the availability of fresh water is limited. Today, one in six people is under “water stress,” meaning that they have no access to clean water. It is one of the many paradoxes of water. This essential liquid, which in many ways is so commonplace, is also very peculiar. Water behaves differently than other materials in more than 70 ways. These anomalies not only keep our bodies in balance, but secure the thermal stability of our planet as well. Whereas most liquids contract when cooled, water does the opposite – it expands as temperature drops, which, among other effects, allows fish to survive the winter. What’s more, water diffuses more quickly as a system becomes denser – the opposite behaviour to most other fluids.

In her Perimeter Institute Public Lecture, physicist Dr. Marcia C. Barbosa will examine how we can better understand this precious resource that is both incredibly abundant on Earth, yet dangerously scarce to millions of people. Decoding the strange properties of water, Barbosa argues, may be essential to resolving the widespread problem of water stress.

We study the separability of quantum states in bosonic system. Our main tool here is the "separability witnesses", and a connection between "separability witnesses" and a new kind of positivity of matrices--- "Power Positive Matrices" is drawn. Such connection is employed to demonstrate that multi-qubit quantum states with Dicke states being its eigenvectors is separable if and only if two related Hankel matrices are positive semidefinite. By employing this criterion, we are able to show that such state is separable if and only if it's partial transpose is non-negative, which confirms the conjecture in [Wolfe, Yelin, Phys. Rev. Lett. (2014)]. Then, we present a class of bosonic states in d⊗d system such that for general d, determine its separabilityNP-hard although verifiable conditions for separability is easily derived in case d=3,4.

We investigate through non-equilibrium molecular dynamic simulations the flow of anomalous
fluids inside rigid nanotubes. Our results reveal an anomalous increase of the overall mass flux
for nanotubes with sufficiently smaller radii. This is explained in terms of a transition from a
single-file type of flow to the movement of an ordered-like fluid as the nanotube radius increases.
The occurrence of a global minimum in the mass flux at this transition reflects the competition
between the two characteristic length scales of the core-softened potential. Moreover, by increasing
further the radius, another substantial change in the flow behavior, which becomes more evident at
low temperatures, leads to a local minimum in the overall mass flux. Microscopically, this second
transition is originated by the formation of a double-layer of flowing particles in the confined
nanotube space. These nano-fluidic features give insights about the behavior of confined isotropic
anomalous fluids.

The remnant accretion disk formed in binaries involving neutron stars and/or black holes is a source of non-relativistic ejecta. This 'disk wind' is launched on a thermal and/or viscous timescale, and can provide an amount of material comparable to that in the dynamical ejecta. I will present recent work aimed at characterizing

the properties of these winds through time-dependent radiation-hydrodynamic simulations that include the relevant physics needed to follow the ejecta composition. I will focus on the effect of black hole spin and/or hypermassive neutron star lifetime on the disk wind, and on the interaction of the wind with the dynamical ejecta. I will also discuss the implications of these results for the optical/IR signal from these events, and for the origin of r-process elements in the Galaxy.