Topics in General Relativity theory: Gravitational-wave measurements of black-hole parameters; gravitational collapse of a cylindrical body; and classical-particle evolution in the presence of closed, timelike curves

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1993

OSTI ID:7015813

Echeverria, F

In this thesis the author studies three different topics in General Relativity. The first study investigates the accuracy with which the mass and angular momentum of a black hole can be determined by measurements of gravitational waves from the hole, using a gravitational-wave detector. The black hole is assumed to have been strongly perturbed and the detector measures the waves produced by its resulting vibration and ring-down. The uncertainties in the measured parameters arise from the noise present in the detector. It is found that the faster the hole rotates, the more accurate the measurements will be, with the uncertainty in the angular momentum decreasing rapidly with increasing rotation speed. The second study is an analysis of the gravitational collapse of an infinitely long, cylindrical dust shell. It is found that the collapse evolves into a naked singularity in finite time. Analytical expressions for the variables describing the collapse are found at late times near the singularity. The collapse is also followed, with a numerical simulation, from the start until very close to the singularity. The singularity is found to be strong, in the sense that an observer riding on the shell is infinitely stretched in one direction and infinitely compressed in another. The gravitational waves emitted from the collapse are also analyzed. The last study focuses on the consequences of the existence of closed timelike curves in a wormhole spacetime. Such curves might cause a system with apparently well-posed initial conditions to have no self-consistent evolution. The author studies the case of a classical particle with a hard-sphere potential, focusing attention on initial conditions for which the evolution, if followed naively, is self-inconsistent: The ball travels to the past through the wormhole, colliding with its younger self, preventing itself from entering the wormhole. For all such initial conditions, there are an infinite number of self-consistent solutions.

• Research Organization: California Inst. of Tech., Pasadena, CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 7015813
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

661310* -- Relativity & Gravitation-- (1992-)
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ANGULAR MOMENTUM
BLACK HOLES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DUSTS
GRAVITATIONAL COLLAPSE
MASS
MATHEMATICS
NUMERICAL ANALYSIS
SIMULATION
SINGULARITY