Daily Papers

We construct Feynman rules for Lindblad master equations in the operator language of quantum optics: a fixed algebra of elementary operator moves and closed-form propagators for perturbation theory about an exactly solvable, in most cases Gaussian, generator. The expansion separates into a kinematic part (the shift algebra on the Wick-ordered eigenoperators O_{mn}=:(c^dagger)^m c^n:, from which the vertex table for a specified interaction is assembled) and a dynamical part that enters only through the resolvent of the unperturbed generator, diagonal and additive for any stable, diagonalizable Gaussian L_0, including thermal and squeezed reservoirs and correlated decay, and equally available for a two-level emitter, driven or undriven. In the driven Kerr cavity the loop expansion is the semiclassical expansion and the series is asymptotic. In a strongly driven two-level atom, dressed lines replace a series of finite radius by one accurate deep into saturation, one line per Mollow component. For Kerr rings and chains the cost is polynomial in the number of sites at fixed perturbative order. On a three-site ring the diagrams recover the non-Gaussian part of the three-photon correlation that the Gaussian cumulant closure lacks; carried to tenth order they give the smallest g^{(3)} error of the methods compared for Uleq0.25κ at a cost below that of a fourth-order closure, and third- and fourth-order closures are more accurate at moderate coupling. The same rules, extended to the counting-field-tilted generator, give the photon-counting cumulants of a disordered eight-site chain beyond direct diagonalization; quantum-jump trajectories at three couplings agree with them to within 1.6 standard errors, within one at the strongest coupling, where they place the third cumulant six standard errors above the Gaussian value.

We compute Kerr-Newman quasinormal modes using a recently found exact separation of the gravitoelectric perturbation equations. For each spin-label ς=pm1, a matrix angular ordinary differential equation and a scalar second-order radial ordinary differential equation define a joint spectral problem for the complex frequency ω and separation constant λ. We solve this problem by imposing regularity at the angular poles, ingoing behavior at the event horizon, and outgoing behavior at infinity. We benchmark the numerical code built to solve the separated equations, and the resulting frequencies, against recently published spectral calculations of the coupled system. Comparisons with those results yield absolute differences of order 10^{-10} to 10^{-5}, depending on the BH parameters and overtone number. We also find numerical hints of spin-label isospectrality in both the electromagnetic-led and gravitational-led sectors of fundamental quasinormal modes, even at near-extremal Kerr-Newman configurations. These results provide numerical evidence that the separated equations reproduce Kerr-Newman quasinormal frequencies and offer a practical route to exploring the ringdown of rotating, charged black holes.

The catalog of ringed galaxies was compiled through visual classification of synthetic images from the TNG50 simulation. Galaxies were selected based on specific criteria: a redshift range of 0.01 < z < 0.1, stellar mass M_star >10^9 M_odot, stellar half-mass radius r_{50} > 1 kpc, and specific star formation rate (sSFR), log(sSFR/yr^{-1}) > -13. Our classification allowed for differentiation between inner rings, outer rings, combinations of rings, and partial rings (pseudo-rings), including barred and non-barred ringed galaxies. We constructed a control sample of non-ringed galaxies with similar redshift, stellar mass, and environmental density distributions. We identified 807 ringed galaxies. Approximately 59% possess an inner ring, 22% a partial ring, 12% an outer ring, and 7% have i+o rings. Our statistical analysis reveals that 64% (507 galaxies) exhibit bars. Ringed galaxies exhibit lower efficiency for star formation, reduced gas fractions, redder colors, and higher metallicities compared to non-ringed disk objects. They also show greater variability in metallicity for a given stellar mass. From the analysis of radial profiles, galaxies with outer rings exhibit a r_{50} similar to or slightly larger than their control group, while those with inner or partial rings tend to have smaller sizes. A deeper exploration of radial density profiles revealed a pronounced central mass deficit preceding the ring structures, with inner and outer rings located at r_{50} and 1.5 , r_{50}, respectively. Galaxies with both i+o rings have inner rings that are more compact and massive. Additionally, galaxies with partial rings exhibit deeper mass profiles than their controls, particularly in central areas. These findings improve our understanding of galactic evolution and the complex interplay between mass distribution and morphology.

Tellegen medium has long been a topic of debate, with its existence being contested over several decades. It was first proposed by Tellegen in 1948 and is characterized by a real-valued cross coupling between electric and magnetic responses, distinguishing it from the well-known chiral medium that has imaginary coupling coefficients. Significantly, Tellegen responses are closely linked to axion dynamics, an extensively studied subject in condensed matter physics. Here, we report the realization of Tellegen metamaterials in the microwave region through a judicious combination of subwavelength metallic resonators, gyromagnetic materials, and permanent magnet discs. We observe the key signature of the Tellegen response, i.e. a Kerr rotation for reflected wave, while the polarization remains the same in the transmission direction. The retrieved effective Tellegen parameter is several orders of magnitude greater than that of natural materials. Our work opens door to a variety of nonreciprocal photonic devices and may provide a platform for studying axion physics.

We study the pseudospectrum of the Kerr black hole for gravitational perturbations with spin weight s=2, the case of greatest interest in gravitational-wave astronomy. In the hyperboloidal framework with two-dimensional Chebyshev collocation, we formulate the quasinormal mode problem as a non-self-adjoint eigenvalue problem. For sneq0 the fields Ψ^{(s)} and Ψ^{(-s)} are independent, so the conserved current method yields no single-field energy norm. We overcome this with the Teukolsky--Starobinsky identities, which relate Ψ^{(-2)} to a fourth-order operator on Ψ^{(2)} and yield an H^2 energy norm after symmetrization. With the H^1 norm known for s=0, this suggests the pattern H^{|s|}, verified for s=0 and s=2. All results use an ω-independent two-field hierarchy. We find that the pseudospectrum tightens by 1.1 to 3.5 decades at each step of L^2to H^1to H^2, yet stays large in every norm. The s=+2 and s=-2 operators are isospectral but not isopseudospectral: at twelve of fourteen probes the ψ_0 resolvent exceeds the ψ_4 one by 0.19 to 0.82 decades in the H^2 norm, while at the two probes furthest along the QNM line the ordering reverses by 0.18 to 0.19 decades. The gravitational pseudospectrum exceeds the scalar one by 0.5 to 5.2 decades in the window minimum and by 5.9 decades in L^2 at ωM=0.47-0.17,i, while along the damping direction the s=2 resolvent is non-monotonic and the s=0 resolvent smooth. QNM spectral instability is therefore a universal feature of Kerr, and is stronger for gravitational perturbations.

In 1936, Albert Einstein wrote a brief article where he suggested the possibility that a massive object acted as a lens, amplifying the brightness of a star. As time went by, this phenomenon, known as gravitational lensing, has become a powerful research tool in astrophysics. The simplest and symmetrical expression of a gravitational lens is known as Einstein ring. This model has recently allowed the measurement of the mass of a star, the white dwarf Stein 2051 B. The purpose of this work is to show an accessible and uptodate introduction to the effect of gravitational lensing, focused on the Einstein ring and the measurement of the mass of Stein 2051 B. The intended audience of this article are non-graduate students of physics and similar fields of study, and requires only basic knowledge of classical physics, modern physics, algebra and trigonometry.

We establish a charge-regular formulation of separated Kerr--Newman perturbations and an explicit map from master solutions to physical radiative fields. We derive regular angular and radial first-order systems and their second-order reductions, with finite-charge deformations of the spin pm1 and pm2 Teukolsky equations. The field and boundary normalizations recover the standard Kerr conventions while accounting for the nonuniform zero-charge limit at infinity. For physical Einstein--Maxwell perturbations with the usual peeling behavior, we obtain explicit outgoing gravitational and electromagnetic amplitudes and energy fluxes at nonzero real frequency. The resulting finite-charge radiation-composition ratios depend only on the regular angular functions, independently of the radial excitation.

We study lensing of gravitational waves by a black hole in the deep wave optics regime, i.e. when the wavelength is much larger than the black hole Schwarzschild radius. We apply it to triple systems, with a binary of stellar mass objects in the inspiraling phase orbiting around a central massive black hole. We describe the full polarisation structure of the wave and derive predictions for the polarisation modes of the scattered wave measured by the observer. We show that lensing in the wave optics regime is not helicity preserving, as opposed to lensing in the geometric optics regime. The amplitude of the total wave is modulated due to interference between the directly transmitted and lensed components. The relative amplitude of the modulation is fixed by the lensing geometry and can reach unity in the most favourable settings. This indicates that wave optics lensing is potentially detectable by LISA for sufficiently high SNR systems. Our findings show that in the wave optics regime it is necessary to go beyond the usual lensing description where the amplification factor is assumed to be the same for both helicity modes. While motivated by GW190521 and the AGN formation scenario, our results apply more broadly to stellar-mass binaries orbiting a third body described as a Schwarzschild black hole, with a period comparable to the GW observation time.

Vacuum Kerr perturbations in general relativity have identical even- and odd-parity quasinormal frequencies. We establish this parity isospectrality for linear gravitoelectromagnetic perturbations of subextremal Kerr--Newman--de Sitter black holes, without a slow-rotation or small-charge expansion. We reconstruct the radiative metric and gauge-potential perturbations directly from gauge-invariant master variables in radiation gauge, without an intermediate complex potential.

Motivated by the peculiar features of the trans-Neptunian object (TNO) Máni and the discovery of ring systems around Centaurs and trans-Neptunian bodies, we investigate the stability of particles around a small irregular body hosting a deep equatorial crater. This study is the third contribution in a sequence devoted to the dynamics around non-spherically symmetric bodies. Using Máni as a reference model, whose crater depth exceeds 10% of its radius, we map the system stability through complementary methods: Poincaré surfaces of section (PSS), survival maps, and the finite-time Lyapunov exponent (FTLE). In the nominal case, the 1!:!1, 2!:!1, 3!:!1, and 4!:!1 spin-orbit resonances (SORs) are consistently identified by all techniques. The prominent 3!:!1 SOR exhibits a bifurcated structure at high eccentricities, matching structural transitions observed at lower Jacobi constant values in the PSSs. Increasing the rotation rate (λ) and crater mass ratio (μ) enlarges resonance widths and promotes overlap, making the 2!:!1 and 4!:!1 SORs progressively dominant. Lower rotation rates allow stable trajectories to persist at higher eccentricities, whereas the 1!:!1 SOR is highly sensitive to stronger perturbations and disappears in the most extreme cases. In contrast to mass-anomaly models, which can clear the region interior to the 2!:!1 SOR, the crater configuration considered here preserves stable regions in this vicinity, suggesting alternative scenarios for the formation and maintenance of debris structures around irregular minor bodies.

In the present paper we study the singularity structure of the exterior field of neutron stars with the aid of the four-parameter exact solution of the Einstein-Maxwell equations. The complete analysis of this problem in the generic case becomes possible due to the implementation of the novel analytical approach to the resolution of the singularity condition, and it shows the absence of the ring singularities off the symmetry axis in the positive mass case, as well as the possibility of the removal of the ring singularity by a strong magnetic field in the negative mass case. The solution takes an extraordinarily simple form in the equatorial plane, very similar to that of the Kerr solution, which makes it most suitable for astrophysical applications as the simplest model of a rotating magnetized deformed mass. It also provides a nontrivial example confirming a recent claim that the varphi component of the electromagnetic four-potential has features inconsistent with the intrinsic properties of the electrovac metric, while the magnetic field is represented correctly by the t component of the dual electromagnetic four-potential.

We present GravLensX, an innovative method for rendering black holes with gravitational lensing effects using neural networks. The methodology involves training neural networks to fit the spacetime around black holes and then employing these trained models to generate the path of light rays affected by gravitational lensing. This enables efficient and scalable simulations of black holes with optically thin accretion disks, significantly decreasing the time required for rendering compared to traditional methods. We validate our approach through extensive rendering of multiple black hole systems with superposed Kerr metric, demonstrating its capability to produce accurate visualizations with significantly 15times reduced computational time. Our findings suggest that neural networks offer a promising alternative for rendering complex astrophysical phenomena, potentially paving a new path to astronomical visualization.

We investigate asymptotic Schwarzschild exterior solutions in the context of modified gravity theories, specifically within the framework of f(R) gravity, where the asymptotic behavior recovers the standard Schwarzschild solution of General Relativity. Unlike previous studies that rely mainly on analytical approximations, our approach combines asymptotic analysis with numerical integration of the underlying differential equations. Using these solutions, we analyze strong lensing effects to obtain the photon sphere radius and the corresponding capture parameter. Considering rings produced by total reflection, we define the photon sphere width as the difference between the first total reflection and the capture parameter; and study how it is modified in the f(R) scenario. Our results show that the photon sphere width increases in the presence of f(R)-type modifications, indicating deviations from GR that could be observable in the strong-field regime.

A set of infinitesimal {rm Virasoro_{,L}}rm Virasoro_{,R} diffeomorphisms are presented which act non-trivially on the horizon of a generic Kerr black hole with spin J. The covariant phase space formalism provides a formula for the Virasoro charges as surface integrals on the horizon. Integrability and associativity of the charge algebra are shown to require the inclusion of `Wald-Zoupas' counterterms. A counterterm satisfying the known consistency requirement is constructed and yields central charges c_L=c_R=12J. Assuming the existence of a quantum Hilbert space on which these charges generate the symmetries, as well as the applicability of the Cardy formula, the central charges reproduce the macroscopic area-entropy law for generic Kerr black holes.

We study how a radially oscillating thin shell outside a black hole (BH) affects gravitational wave ringdown and derive matching conditions for polar and axial perturbations from the linearized Israel junction conditions on the moving worldtube. Periodic shell motion produces Floquet sidebands in the scattered wave. For a distant shell, the motion has little effect on the prompt ringdown and only weakly modifies the late time echoes. When the shell is closer to the BH, a replica of a long lived shell mode enters the incident frequency band, increasing the late time echo amplitude by roughly two orders of magnitude. We also identify an exceptional point where two polar modes coalesce and find the contribution of its second order pole in the late time waveform.