Spontaneous Creation of Circularly Polarized Photons in Chiral Astrophysical Systems

Adrian Del Rio, Nicolas Sanchis-Gual, Vassilios Mewes, Ivan Agullo, José A. Font, Jose Navarro-Salas

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

This work establishes a relation between chiral anomalies in curved spacetimes and the radiative content of the gravitational field. In particular, we show that a flux of circularly polarized gravitational waves triggers the spontaneous creation of photons with net circular polarization from the quantum vacuum. Using waveform catalogs, we identify precessing binary black holes as astrophysical configurations that emit such gravitational radiation and then solve the fully nonlinear Einstein's equations with numerical relativity to evaluate the net effect. The quantum amplitude for a merger is comparable to the Hawking emission rate of the final black hole and small to be directly observed. However, the implications for the inspiral of binary neutron stars could be more prominent, as argued on symmetry grounds.

Original languageEnglish
Article number211301
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume124
Issue number21
DOIs
StatePublished - May 29 2020

Funding

We are grateful to T. Dietrich, V. Chaurasia and collaborators for providing waveform data from their BNS simulations. We thank A. Ashtekar, E. Bianchi, M. Campanelli, M. Campiglia, V. Cardoso, M. Casals, F. Duque, G. Faye, S. Gimeno-Soler, C. Herdeiro, A. Torres-Forne, J. Zanelli, and Y. Zlochower for useful comments. This work also benefited from discussions during the GR22/Amaldi13 conference in Valencia. A.D.R. acknowledges financial support by the European Union's H2020 ERC Consolidator Grant "Matter and strong-field gravity: New frontiers in Einstein's theory" No. MaGRaTh - 646597, and funds from the GWverse COST Action CA16104, "Black holes, gravitational waves, and fundamental physics"; N.S.G. by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) projects No. PTDC/FIS-OUT/28407/2017 and No. UIDB/00099/2020; J.A.F. by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Grant No. PGC2018-095984-B-I00), the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2019/071) and the European Union's Horizon 2020 RISE programme (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017 Grant No. FunFiCO-777740); I.A. by the NSF CAREER Grant No. PHY-1552603, and the Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics of Louisiana State University; J.N.S. by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad grants No. FIS2017-91161-EXP and No. FIS2017-84440-C2-1-P; and V.M. by NSF Grants No. OAC-1550436, No. AST-1516150, No. PHY-1607520, No. PHY-1305730, No. PHY-1707946, No. PHY-1726215, funds from AYA2015-66899-C2-1-P, and Rochester Institute of Technology for the FGWA SIRA initiative, the Exascale Computing Project (17-SC-20-SC), a collaborative effort of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is supported under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. We are grateful to T. Dietrich, V. Chaurasia and collaborators for providing waveform data from their BNS simulations. We thank A. Ashtekar, E. Bianchi, M. Campanelli, M. Campiglia, V. Cardoso, M. Casals, F. Duque, G. Faye, S. Gimeno-Soler, C. Herdeiro, A. Torres-Forne, J. Zanelli, and Y. Zlochower for useful comments. This work also benefited from discussions during the GR22/Amaldi13 conference in Valencia. A. D. R. acknowledges financial support by the European Union’s H2020 ERC Consolidator Grant “Matter and strong-field gravity: New frontiers in Einstein’s theory” No. MaGRaTh--646597, and funds from the GWverse COST Action CA16104, “Black holes, gravitational waves, and fundamental physics”; N. S. G. by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) projects No. PTDC/FIS-OUT/28407/2017 and No. UIDB/00099/2020; J. A. F. by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Grant No. PGC2018-095984-B-I00), the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2019/071) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 RISE programme (H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017 Grant No. FunFiCO-777740); I. A. by the NSF CAREER Grant No. PHY-1552603, and the Hearne Institute for Theoretical Physics of Louisiana State University; J. N. S. by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad grants No. FIS2017-91161-EXP and No. FIS2017-84440-C2-1-P; and V. M. by NSF Grants No. OAC-1550436, No. AST-1516150, No. PHY-1607520, No. PHY-1305730, No. PHY-1707946, No. PHY-1726215, funds from AYA2015-66899-C2-1-P, and Rochester Institute of Technology for the FGWA SIRA initiative, the Exascale Computing Project (17-SC-20-SC), a collaborative effort of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science and the National Nuclear Security Administration. Work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is supported under contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy.

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