Gravitational waves from binary coalescences provide one of the cleanest signatures of the nature of compact objects. It has been recently argued that the post-merger ringdown waveform of exotic ultracompact objects is initially identical to that of a black-hole, and that putative corrections at the horizon scale will appear as secondary pulses after the main burst of radiation. Here we extend this analysis in three important directions: (i) we show that this result applies to a large class of exotic compact objects with a photon sphere for generic orbits in the test-particle limit; (ii) we investigate the late-time ringdown in more detail, showing that it is universally characterized by a modulated and distorted train of "echoes"of the modes of vibration associated with the photon sphere; (iii) we study for the first time equal-mass, head-on collisions of two ultracompact boson stars and compare their gravitational-wave signal to that produced by a pair of black-holes. If the initial objects are compact enough as to mimic a binary black-hole collision up to the merger, the final object exceeds the maximum mass for boson stars and collapses to a black-hole. This suggests that -in some configurations -the coalescence of compact boson stars might be almost indistinguishable from that of black-holes. On the other hand, generic configurations display peculiar signatures that can be searched for in gravitational-wave data as smoking guns of exotic compact objects. arXiv:1608.08637v2 [gr-qc]

Ultracompact objects are self-gravitating systems with a light ring. It was recently suggested that fluctuations in the background of these objects are extremely long-lived and might turn unstable at the nonlinear level, if the object is not endowed with a horizon. If correct, this result has important consequences: objects with a light ring are black holes. In other words, the nonlinear instability of ultracompact stars would provide a strong argument in favor of the "black hole hypothesis," once electromagnetic or gravitational-wave observations confirm the existence of light rings. Here we explore in some depth the mode structure of ultracompact stars, in particular constant-density stars and gravastars. We show that the existence of very long-lived modes -localized near a second, stable null geodesic -is a generic feature of gravitational perturbations of such configurations. Already at the linear level, such modes become unstable if the object rotates sufficiently fast to develop an ergoregion. Finally, we conjecture that the long-lived modes become unstable under fragmentation via a Dyson-Chandrasekhar-Fermi mechanism at the nonlinear level. Depending on the structure of the star, it is also possible that nonlinearities lead to the formation of small black holes close to the stable light ring. Our results suggest that the mere observation of a light ring is a strong evidence for the existence of black holes.

We present, in closed analytic form, a general stationary, slowly rotating black hole, which is solution to a large class of alternative theories of gravity in four dimensions. In these theories, the Einstein-Hilbert action is supplemented by all possible quadratic, algebraic curvature invariants coupled to a scalar field. The solution is found as a deformation of the Schwarzschild metric in General Relativity. We explicitly derive the changes to the orbital frequency at the innermost stable circular orbit and at the light ring in closed form. These results could be useful when comparing General Relativity against alternative theories by (say) measurements of X-ray emission in accretion disks, or by stellar motion around supermassive black holes. When gravitational-wave astronomy comes into force, strong constraints on the coupling parameters can in principle be made.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. v2: references added and one minor correction in the discussion. Published in PRD as Brief Repor

Gravitational waves emitted by distorted black holes-such as those arising from the coalescence of two neutron stars or black holes-carry not only information about the corresponding spacetime but also about the underlying theory of gravity. Although general relativity remains the simplest, most elegant, and viable theory of gravitation, there are generic and robust arguments indicating that it is not the ultimate description of the gravitational universe. Here, we focus on a particularly appealing extension of general relativity, which corrects Einstein's theory through the addition of terms which are second order in curvature: the topological Gauss-Bonnet invariant coupled to a dilaton. We study gravitational-wave emission from black holes in this theory and (i) find strong evidence that black holes are linearly (mode) stable against both axial and polar perturbations, (ii) discuss how the quasinormal modes of black holes can be excited during collisions involving black holes, and finally (iii) show that future ringdown detections with a large signal-to-noise ratio would improve current constraints on the coupling parameter of the theory.

The nature and properties of dark matter are both outstanding issues in physics. Besides clustering in halos, the universal character of gravity implies that self-gravitating compact dark matter configurations -predicted by various models -might be spread throughout the universe. Their astrophysical signature can be used to probe fundamental particle physics, or to test alternative descriptions of compact objects in active galactic nuclei. Here we discuss the most promising dissection tool of such configurations: the inspiral of a compact stellar-size object and consequent gravitational-wave emission. The inward motion of this "test probe" encodes unique information about the nature of the supermassive configuration. When the probe travels through some compact region we show, within a Newtonian approximation, that the quasi-adiabatic inspiral is mainly driven by dark matter accretion and by dynamical friction, rather than by radiation-reaction. When accretion dominates, the frequency and amplitude of the gravitational-wave signal produced during the latest stages of the inspiral are nearly constant. In the exterior region we study a model in which the inspiral is driven by gravitational-and scalar-wave emission, described at fully relativistic level. Resonances in the energy flux appear whenever the orbital frequency matches the effective mass of the dark matter particle, corresponding to the excitation of the central object's quasinormal frequencies. Unexpectedly, these resonances can lead to large dephasing with respect to standard inspiral templates, to such an extent as to prevent detection with matched filtering techniques. We discuss some observational consequences of these effects for gravitational-wave detection.

Compact bosonic field configurations, or boson stars, are promising dark matter candidates which have been invoked as an alternative description for the supermassive compact objects in active galactic nuclei. Boson stars can be comparable in size and mass to supermassive objects, and they might be hard to distinguish by electromagnetic observations. However, boson stars do not possess an event horizon, and their global spacetime structure is different from that of a black hole. This leaves a characteristic imprint in the gravitational-wave emission, which can be used as a discriminant between black holes and other horizonless compact objects. Here we perform a detailed study of boson stars and their gravitational-wave signatures in a fully relativistic setting, a study which was lacking in the existing literature in many respects. We construct several fully relativistic boson star configurations, and we analyze their geodesic structure and free oscillation spectra, or quasinormal modes. We explore the gravitational and scalar response of boson star spacetimes to an inspiraling stellar-mass object and compare it to its black hole counterpart. We find that a generic signature of compact boson stars is the resonant-mode excitation by a small compact object on stable quasicircular geodesic motion.

give rise to strong tidal effects. On the observational side, LIGO/Virgo has observed more BH mergers than neutron star mergers [2], and this may well remain the case, even as more gravitational-wave detectors come online and the existing ones are upgraded to improved sensitivities.

Some models (such as the Skyrme model, a low-energy effective field theory for QCD) suggest that the high-density matter prevailing in neutron star interiors may be significantly anisotropic. Anisotropy is known to affect the bulk properties of nonrotating neutron stars in General Relativity. In this paper we study the effects of anisotropy on slowly rotating stars in General Relativity. We also consider one of the most popular extensions of Einstein's theory, namely scalar-tensor theories allowing for spontaneous scalarization (a phase transition similar to spontaneous magnetization in ferromagnetic materials). Anisotropy affects the moment of inertia of neutron stars (a quantity that could potentially be measured in binary pulsar systems) in both theories. We find that the effects of scalarization increase (decrease) when the tangential pressure is bigger (smaller) than the radial pressure, and we present a simple criterion to determine the onset of scalarization by linearizing the scalar-field equation. Our calculations suggest that binary pulsar observations may constrain the degree of anisotropy or even, more optimistically, provide evidence for anisotropy in neutron star cores.