We study graviton-photon conversion in the presence of stochastic magnetic fields. Assuming Gaussian magnetic fields that may possess nontrivial helicity, and unpolarized gravitational waves (GWs) as the initial state, we obtain expressions for the intensity and linear/circular polarizations of GWs after propagation over a finite distance. We calculate both the expectation values and variances of these observables, and find their nontrivial dependence on the typical correlation length of the magnetic field, the propagation distance, and the photon plasma mass. Our analysis reveals that an observationally favorable frequency range with narrower variance can emerge for the intensity, while a peak structure appears in the expectation value of the circular polarization when the magnetic field has nonzero helicity. We also identify a consistency relation between the GW intensity and circular polarization.

The equivalence principle for test gravitational physics strongly constrains dynamics of spacetime, providing a powerful criterion for selecting candidate theories of gravity. However, checking its validity for a particular theory is often a very difficult task. We devise here a simple theoretical criterion for identifying equivalence principle violations in black hole thermodynamics. Employing this criterion, we prove that Lanczos-Lovelock gravity violates the strong equivalence principle, leaving general relativity as the only local, diffeomorphism-invariant theory compatible with it. However, we also show that certain nonlocal expressions for black hole entropy appear to obey the strong equivalence principle.

The goal of this talk is to give an overview of the current status of the development of the Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer ground based gravitational wave (GW) detectors and of their foreseen scientific goals. These detectors will be up to a factor 8 more sensitive across the band covered by current detectors, namely LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA, and will extend the accessible frequency band towards the low frequency regime, i.e., below 10 Hz. These improvements will not only enhance the number and quality of GW observations, but will also enable researchers to have access to sources and physical processes which are out of reach for current detectors and explore the possibility of detecting previously unknown GW sources. The improvement in sensitivity in the low frequency regime will also increase the observation time of compact binary coalescence events, strengthening the collaboration with electromagnetic observatories for multimessenger observations of binary neutron star events. In fact, current detectors proved that joint observations of GW events with electromagnetic observatories are not only possible, but they can also give us unprecedented insights on the underlying physics of astrophysical processes.

A recent work [Phys. Rev. D 111, 104040] shows that the curvature singularity of a black hole can vanish at a fine-tuned mass value, which implies that regular black holes could be special states in black hole evolution. We study the quasinormal modes (QNMs) of the Bardeen black hole and its singular counterparts under scalar and electromagnetic perturbations, employing the WKB method and time-domain analysis, respectively. The time-domain analysis results suggest that echo signals may emerge in the QNMs of singular black hole states. Furthermore, we investigate the null geodesics of these black holes. We find that a black hole with singularity may possess two light rings, whereas regular black holes consistently maintain only one light ring. Similar conclusions are also valid for the regular Hayward black hole and its singular counterparts.

Gravitational self-force (GSF) theory is a strong-gravity perturbative approach to the relativistic two-body problem, primarily developed to model extreme-mass-ratio inspirals, where one compact object is significantly more massive than the companion. However, recent advancements in GSF calculations, particularly involving second-order self-force (2GSF) results, indicated a much broader applicability across a wider range of mass ratios. These developments have motivated efforts to incorporate GSF results into the effective-one-body (EOB) framework, where they have already been successfully integrated into the state-of-the-art waveform model, SEOBNRv5, employed in recent LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) observing runs. In this work, we present SEOBNR-GSF, a nonspinning inspiral-merger-ringdown (IMR) EOB waveform model that introduces a GSF-informed EOB Hamiltonian as its central innovation. This marks the first complete IMR waveform model constructed primarily from GSF results. We show that our model outperforms inspiral waveforms from full 2GSF calculations in the intermediate-to-comparable mass regime. Furthermore, by comparing with a post-Newtonian-informed variant, SEOBNR-GSF-PN, we demonstrate that the inclusion of numerical GSF information in the Hamiltonian leads to significant improvements in model fidelity. Finally, we benchmark our model against high-accuracy, nonspinning numerical-relativity simulations from the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) catalogue and find that its median mismatch is comparable to that of SEOBNRv5, suggesting that this approach holds promise for further enhancing future EOB waveform models.

Arising from admissible extended scale-critical short-pulse initial data, we show that 3+1 dimensional Einstein vacuum equations admit dynamical Kerr black hole formation solutions. Our hyperbolic arguments combine the scale-critical gravitational-collapse result by An--Luk with the recent breakthrough by Klainerman--Szeftel on proving nonlinear Kerr stability with small angular momentum, which requires us to perform various specific coordinate changes and frame transformations. Furthermore, allowing large spacetime angular momentum, with new elliptic arguments and precise leading order calculations, we also solve the apparent horizon in Kerr black hole formation spacetimes (including Klainerman--Szeftel's Kerr stability spacetimes) and conduct an exploration, detailing the emergence, evolution, asymptotics and final state of the apparent horizon. Building on our analysis, without time symmetric assumption, we then put forward a new mathematical framework and prove both the dynamical Penrose inequality and the spacetime Penrose inequality in our black-hole formation spacetimes and in the perturbative regime of subextremal Kerr black holes. Collectively, without assuming any symmetry, we extend Christodoulou's celebrated trapped surface formation theorem to a black hole formation result.

Gravitational radiation from known astrophysical sources is conventionally treated classically. This treatment corresponds, implicitly, to the hypothesis that a particular class of quantum-mechanical states -- the so-called coherent states -- adequately describe the gravitational radiation field. We propose practicable, quantitative tests of that hypothesis using resonant bar detectors monitored in coincidence with LIGO-style interferometers. Our tests readily distinguish fields that contain significant thermal components or squeezing. We identify concrete circumstances in which the classical (i.e., coherent state) hypothesis is likely to fail. Such failures are of fundamental interest, in that addressing them requires us to treat the gravitational field quantum-mechanically, and they open a new window into the dynamics of gravitational wave sources.

We demonstrate that the statistical fluctuations in resonant radiation detectors operating in homodyne and heterodyne modes offers additional, complementary information to that obtained from their direct operation as click detectors. We use this to refine tests of the coherent state hypothesis of interest in connection with gravitational wave fields.

Simulations of relativistic plasmas traditionally focus on the dynamics of two-species mixtures of charged particles under the influence of external magnetic fields and those generated by particle currents. However, the extreme conditions of astrophysical plasmas near compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars are often characterized by mixtures of electrons, protons, and positrons, whose dynamics can differ significantly because of the considerable mass contrast. We present the first two-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of relativistic turbulence and magnetic reconnection in a three-species plasma, varying the relative abundance of electrons, protons, and positrons while employing realistic mass ratios to achieve unprecedented accuracy. We find that turbulence leads to the formation of magnetic islands, current sheets, and plasmoids. Reconnection occurs between these structures, with plasma composition playing a key role in determining the number of reconnection sites and their energy-conversion efficiency. In particular, as the proton fraction increases, very small-scale features of the turbulence are washed out, while global dissipative effects are amplified. Finally, using a novel generalization of Ohm's law for a relativistic multi-species plasma, we find that the reconnection rate is primarily governed by the electric fields associated to the divergence of the positron and electron pressure tensors. These results provide new insights into dissipation and particle acceleration in turbulent relativistic plasmas, such as those near black holes and neutron stars, and can be used to interpret their high-energy emission and phenomenology.

Cosmological observations of the recent universe suggest that dark energy equation of state parameter $w$ is growing with time, departing from a cosmological constant for which $w=-1$. Standard quintessence models allow for a varying $w\geq-1$, but observations report that a phantom regime, $w<-1$, is quickly reached in the past. Often discarded because of uncertainties or parametrisation, we rather propose here to embrace the reality of this phantom regime. We revisit an elegant mechanism that accounts for it, thanks to a coupling of quintessence field(s) to matter (and possibly radiation). We show that this allows for steep scalar potentials, and illustrate this with string-inspired models, where $V=V_0\, e^{-\lambda\, \varphi}$ and $\lambda \geq \sqrt{2}$. Those provide solutions in very good agreement with observations, including the phantom regime. We then discuss poles that can appear in $w$, making it diverge at recent times ($z\leq 4$), and that could be detected by observations. We finally comment on an Early Dark Energy-like feature, that systematically appears for free from the models considered, and could be of interest for the Hubble tension.

The (S-type) Gubser-Rocha model is a holographic model, which can be derived from the maximal gauged supergravity in four dimensions. With an appropriate choice of the boundary action, this model exhibits a continuous phase transition in the neutral limit. In this paper, we investigate several aspects of this phase transition. Firstly, we show that the critical exponents of the phase transition match those in the mean-field percolation theory. Subsequently, we also investigate the dynamical stability, and the emergence of the Nambu-Goldstone modes by analyzing the quasinormal modes of the perturbation fields. The dynamical stability agrees with the thermodynamic stability. In addition, we find that there is an emergent Nambu-Goldstone mode in the broken phase of the S-type model.

We prove that for a certain class of Lorentzian manifolds, namely causal spacetimes without observer horizons, conformal transformations can be classified into two types: escaping and non-escaping. This means that successive powers of a given conformal transformation will either send all points to infinity, or none. As an application, we classify the conformal transformations of Einstein's static universe. We also study the question of essentiality in this context, i.e. which conformal transformations are isometric for some metric in the conformal class.

In this short paper, we investigate the impact of selecting only a subset of bright galaxies to provide redshift information for a dark standard siren measurement of the Hubble constant $H_0$. Employing gravitational-wave observations from the Third Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogue (GWTC-3) in conjunction with the GLADE+ galaxy catalogue, we show that restricting to bright galaxy subsets can enhance the precision of the $H_0$ estimate by up to $80\%$ in the most favorable scenario. A comprehensive assessment of systematic uncertainties is still required. This work lays the foundation for employing alternative tracers -- such as brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) and luminous red galaxies (LRGs) -- in gravitational-wave cosmology, particularly at redshifts where conventional galaxy catalogues offer limited coverage.

We consider properties of the gravitational path integral, ${Z}_{\text{grav}}$, of a four-dimensional gravitational effective field theory with $\Lambda>0$ at the quantum level. To leading order, ${Z}_{\text{grav}}$ is dominated by a four-sphere saddle subject to small fluctuations. Beyond this, ${Z}_{\text{grav}}$ receives contributions from additional geometries that may include Einstein metrics of positive curvature. We discuss how a general positive curvature Einstein metric contributes to ${Z}_{\text{grav}}$ at one-loop level. Along the way, we discuss Einstein-Maxwell theory with $\Lambda>0$, and identify an interesting class of closed non-Einstein gravitational instantons. We provide a detailed study for the specific case of $\mathbb{C}P^2$ which is distinguished as the saddle with second largest volume and positive definite tensor eigenspectrum. We present exact one-loop results for scalar particles, Maxwell theory, and Einstein gravity about the Fubini-Study metric on $\mathbb{C}P^2$.

We discuss a local, diff-invariant quantum effective action for gravity that captures the trace anomaly via a counter-term. We discuss why this counter-term is the most significant among infinitely many possible ones, and show how the counter-term leads to a scattering amplitude that is strongly coupled at arbitrarily low energies. We show how the introduction of a new sector with spontaneously broken scale invariance removes the strong coupling problem, and discuss some physical consequences due to the new sector. Three Appendices summarize quantum effective actions -- highlighting connections between their local, and seemingly non-local formulations -- for the scale anomaly in 4D QED, for the axial anomaly in 2D QED, and for the scale anomaly in a 2D sigma model.

In this paper a relation between entangled states and geometry is studied. In particular, the area of 2D parallelogram is obtained from an entangled 4-qubit state. In addition, the vector area of a 3D parallelogram is derived from entangled 6-qubit states. Moreover, the volume of a 3D parallelepiped is deduced from an entangled 9-qubit state. Furthermore, it has been provided the quantum circuit in qiskit code for these entangled states. It is worth mentioning that parallelograms and parallelepipeds serve as fundamental building blocks for more sophisticated geometric structures.

The inclusion of spin effects in the binary dynamics for black hole and neutron stars is crucial for the computation of gravitational wave observables. Worldline supersymmetric models have shown to be particularly efficient at this task up to quadratic order in spin, but progress at higher orders has been hampered by no-go-theorems. In this work we propose a novel approach to overcome this problem by extending the supersymmetry beyond minimal coupling. We demonstrate the potential of this approach by computing an all-order in spin and linear in curvature, manifestly supersymmetric Hamiltonian, as well as a cubic order in spin Hamiltonian in arbitrary spacetime dimensions. In doing so, we identify a criterion that uniquely determines the Kerr geometry in terms of worldline supersymmetry. Equipped with these Hamiltonians, we demonstrate the exponentiation of three-point and Compton amplitudes using the recently proposed Generalized Wilson line approach.