Towers of Gravitational Theories

Abstract

In this essay we introduce a theoretical framework designed to describe black hole dynamics. The difficulties in understanding such dynamics stems from the proliferation of scales involved when one attempts to simultaneously describe all of the relevant dynamical degrees of freedom. These range from the modes that describe the black hole horizon, which are responsible for dissipative effects, to the long wavelength gravitational radiation that drains mechanical energy from macroscopic black hole bound states. We approach the problem from a Wilsonian point of view, by building a tower of theories of gravity each of which is valid at different scales. The methodology leads to multiple new results in diverse topics including phase transitions of Kaluza-Klein black holes and the interactions of spinning black hole in non-relativistic orbits. Moreover, our methods tie together speculative ideas regarding dualities for black hole horizons to real physical measurements in gravitational wave detectors.

Awarded second prize for 2006 Gravity Research Foundation essay contest

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• Worldline effective field theory of inspiralling black hole binaries in presence of dark photon and axionic dark matter
• The Effective Field Theory of Codimension-two Branes
• Vanishing of Quadratic Love Numbers of Schwarzschild Black Holes
• Binary Dynamics from Worldline QFT for Scalar-QED
• Effective-action model for dynamical scalarization beyond the adiabatic approximation
• The Delocalized Effective Degrees of Freedom of a Black Hole at Low Frequencies
• Waveforms from Amplitudes
• Post-Newtonian Binary Dynamics in Effective Field Theory of Horndeski Gravity
• Dynamical Tidal Response of Non-rotating Black Holes: Connecting the MST Formalism and Worldline EFT
• Dynamical Love Numbers for Black Holes and Beyond from Shell Effective Field Theory
• Gravitational Wave Signals from Finite Size Effects in Spinning Binary Inspirals Including Parity Violating Constituents
• Effective-one-body formalism for leading-order radiative effects in the post-linear framework
• Graviton Photoproduction by a Kerr-Newman Black Hole with Worldline EFT