Black hole spectroscopy beyond Kerr: agnostic and theory-based tests with next-generation interferometers

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Hauptverfasser: Maselli, Andrea, Yi, Sophia, Pierini, Lorenzo, Vellucci, Vania, Reali, Luca, Gualtieri, Leonardo, Berti, Emanuele
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Maselli, Andrea
Yi, Sophia
Pierini, Lorenzo
Vellucci, Vania
Reali, Luca
Gualtieri, Leonardo
Berti, Emanuele
author_facet Maselli, Andrea
Yi, Sophia
Pierini, Lorenzo
Vellucci, Vania
Reali, Luca
Gualtieri, Leonardo
Berti, Emanuele
contents Black hole spectroscopy is a clean and powerful tool to test gravity in the strong-field regime and to probe the nature of compact objects. Next-generation ground-based detectors, such as the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer, will observe thousands of binary black hole mergers with large signal-to-noise ratios, allowing for accurate measurements of the remnant black hole quasinormal mode frequencies and damping times. In previous work we developed an observable-based parametrization of the quasinormal mode spectrum of spinning black holes beyond general relativity (ParSpec). In this paper we use this parametrization to ask: can next-generation detectors detect or constrain deviations from the Kerr spectrum by stacking multiple observations of binary mergers from astrophysically motivated populations? We focus on two families of tests: (i) agnostic (null) tests, and (ii) theory-based tests, which make use of quasinormal frequency calculations in specific modified theories of gravity. We consider in particular two quadratic gravity theories (Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons gravity) and various effective field theory-based extensions of general relativity. We find that robust inference of hypothetical corrections to general relativity requires pushing the slow-rotation expansion to high orders. Even when high-order expansions are available, ringdown observations alone may not be sufficient to measure deviations from the Kerr spectrum for theories with dimensionful coupling constants. This is because the constraints are dominated by "light" black hole remnants, and only few of them have sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio in the ringdown. Black hole spectroscopy with next-generation detectors may be able to set tight constraints on theories with dimensionless coupling, as long as we assume prior knowledge of the mass and spin of the remnant black hole.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_14803
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Black hole spectroscopy beyond Kerr: agnostic and theory-based tests with next-generation interferometers
Maselli, Andrea
Yi, Sophia
Pierini, Lorenzo
Vellucci, Vania
Reali, Luca
Gualtieri, Leonardo
Berti, Emanuele
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Black hole spectroscopy is a clean and powerful tool to test gravity in the strong-field regime and to probe the nature of compact objects. Next-generation ground-based detectors, such as the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer, will observe thousands of binary black hole mergers with large signal-to-noise ratios, allowing for accurate measurements of the remnant black hole quasinormal mode frequencies and damping times. In previous work we developed an observable-based parametrization of the quasinormal mode spectrum of spinning black holes beyond general relativity (ParSpec). In this paper we use this parametrization to ask: can next-generation detectors detect or constrain deviations from the Kerr spectrum by stacking multiple observations of binary mergers from astrophysically motivated populations? We focus on two families of tests: (i) agnostic (null) tests, and (ii) theory-based tests, which make use of quasinormal frequency calculations in specific modified theories of gravity. We consider in particular two quadratic gravity theories (Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet and dynamical Chern-Simons gravity) and various effective field theory-based extensions of general relativity. We find that robust inference of hypothetical corrections to general relativity requires pushing the slow-rotation expansion to high orders. Even when high-order expansions are available, ringdown observations alone may not be sufficient to measure deviations from the Kerr spectrum for theories with dimensionful coupling constants. This is because the constraints are dominated by "light" black hole remnants, and only few of them have sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratio in the ringdown. Black hole spectroscopy with next-generation detectors may be able to set tight constraints on theories with dimensionless coupling, as long as we assume prior knowledge of the mass and spin of the remnant black hole.
title Black hole spectroscopy beyond Kerr: agnostic and theory-based tests with next-generation interferometers
topic General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.14803