The cosmic phenomenon predicted by Einstein could change our view of the universe as we know it!

The process could be used to discover a whole new class of ultralight particles and provide direct information about the mass and state of 'gravitational atom' clouds.

On February 11, 2016, researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first detection of gravitational waves. As predicted by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, these waves are the result of massive objects merging, causing ripples in detectable spacetime.

Since then, astrophysicists have theorized a multitude of ways that gravitational waves could be used to study physics beyond the standard models of gravity and particle physics, and advance our understanding of the universe.

So far, gravitational waves have been proposed as a means of studying dark matter, or what's inside neutron stars, supernovae, mergers between supermassive black holes, etc.

In a recent study, a team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam and Harvard University proposed a way that gravitational waves could be used to search for bosons (one of the two fundamental particles in nature). nature) superlight around rotating black holes. This method not only offers a new way to distinguish the properties of binary black holes, but it could also lead to the discovery of new particles beyond the Standard Model.

Subsequent research was carried out by researchers at the Amsterdam Gravitational Particle Astrophysics (GRAPPA), part of the University of Amsterdam, with support from the Center for Theoretical Physics and the Center for Theoretical Science. National at Taipei University, and Harvard University. The results of the study have been published under the title "Sharp Boson Clouds in Binary Inspiral Black Holes" and have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

It is a well-known fact that normal matter will enter black holes over time, which will form an accretion disk around its outer edge (aka the Event Horizon). This disk will be accelerated to incredible speeds, causing the matter inside to become super hot and release a tremendous amount of radiation while slowly accreting onto the black hole's surface. However, over the past few decades, scientists have observed that black holes will lose some of their mass through a process known as "superradiance".

Superradiance, also known as hyperlinks, are radiation-enhancing effects in a number of contexts including quantum mechanics, astrophysics, and relativity.

The phenomenon was studied by Stephen Hawking, who described how rotating black holes would emit radiation that would look "real" to a nearby observer, but "virtual" to one far away. During the transmission of radiation from one frame of reference to another, the particle's own acceleration will cause the particle to change from virtual to real. This strange form of energy, known as "Hawking Radiation," will form clouds of low-mass particles around a black hole. This led to "gravitational atoms" - "gravitational atoms" - so named because of their resemblance to ordinary atoms (clouds of particles surrounding the core).

While scientists know that this phenomenon occurs, they also understand that it can only be explained through the existence of a new ultralight particle that exists outside the Standard Model. This is the focus of the new paper, in which lead author Daniel Baumann (GRAPPA and Taipei University) and his colleagues examined how hypersonication causes unstable ultralight boson clouds to form. naturally around black holes. In addition, they suggest that the similarities between the gravitational atom and the ordinary atom go deeper than their structure.

Gravitational waves are vibrations undulating by the curvature of space-time into waveforms that propagate outward from fluctuations in gravitational sources, and these waves carry energy in the form of gravitational radiation.

In summary, they suggest that binary black holes can cause particles in their clouds to become ionized through the photoelectric effect. As Einstein described, this happens when electromagnetic energy (such as light) comes into contact with a material, causing it to emit excited electrons (photoelectrons). When applied to a binary black hole, Baumann and his colleagues showed how ultralight boson clouds can absorb the 'orbital energy' of a "companion" in the black hole. This will cause some bosons to be ejected and accelerated.

Ultimately, they demonstrated this process can dramatically alter the evolution of binary black holes. As they say:

'The orbital energy lost in this process can outweigh the loss due to GW (Gravital wave) emission, so the ionization that drives the evolution does not merely disturb it . We show that the ionization strength contains sharp features that lead to a distinctive 'kink line' in the evolution of the emitted GW frequency."

They argue that these 'folding lines' will be noticeable to next-generation gravitational-wave interferometers such as the Laser Interferometer Spatial Antenna (LISA). The process could be used to discover a whole new class of ultralight particles and provide direct information about the mass and state of 'gravitational atom' clouds. In short, continuing studies of gravitational waves using more sensitive interferometers could reveal strange physical phenomena that will advance our understanding of black holes and lead to new breakthroughs. in particle physics.

In the coming years, astrophysicists hope to use them to probe the most extreme environments in the universe, like black holes and neutron stars. They also hope that primordial gravitational waves will reveal things about the early universe, help solve the mystery of the matter/antimatter imbalance, and lead to a quantum theory of gravity. new.