Eugeny Babichev, Christos Charmousis, Antoine Lehébel, Tetiana Moskalets

We find and study the properties of black hole solutions for a subclass of Horndeski theory including the cubic Galileon term. The theory under study has shift symmetry but not reflection symmetry for the scalar field. The Galileon is assumed to have linear time dependence characterized by a velocity parameter. We give analytic 3-dimensional solutions that are akin to the BTZ solutions but with a non-trivial scalar field that modifies the effective cosmological constant. We then study the 4-dimensional asymptotically flat and de Sitter solutions. The latter present three different branches according to their effective cosmological constant. For two of these branches, we find families of black hole solutions, parametrized by the velocity of the scalar field. These spherically symmetric solutions, obtained numerically, are different from GR solutions close to the black hole event horizon, while they have the same de-Sitter asymptotic behavior. The velocity parameter represents black hole primary hair.

Daniela Saadeh, Stephen M. Feeney, Andrew Pontzen, Hiranya V. Peiris, Jason D. McEwen

A fundamental assumption in the standard model of cosmology is that the Universe is isotropic on large scales. Breaking this assumption leads to a set of solutions to Einstein's field equations, known as Bianchi cosmologies, only a subset of which have ever been tested against data. For the first time, we consider all degrees of freedom in these solutions to conduct a general test of isotropy using cosmic microwave background temperature and polarization data from Planck. For the vector mode (associated with vorticity), we obtain a limit on the anisotropic expansion of $(\sigma_V/H)_0 < 4.7 \times 10^{-11}$ (95% CI), which is an order of magnitude tighter than previous Planck results that used CMB temperature only. We also place upper limits on other modes of anisotropic expansion, with the weakest limit arising from the regular tensor mode, $(\sigma_{T,\rm reg}/H)_0<1.0 \times 10^{-6}$ (95% CI). Including all degrees of freedom simultaneously for the first time, anisotropic expansion of the Universe is strongly disfavoured, with odds of 121,000:1 against.

James Q. Quach

We develop a gravitational analogue of spin magnetic resonance, called spin gravitational resonance, whereby a gravitational wave interacts with a magnetic field to produce a spin transition. In particular, an external magnetic field separates the energy spin states of a spin-1/2 particle, and the presence of the gravitational wave produces a perturbation in the components of the magnetic field orthogonal to the gravitational wave propagation. In this framework we test Dyson's conjecture that individual gravitons cannot be detected. Although we find no fundamental laws preventing single gravitons being detected with spin gravitational resonance, we show that it cannot be used in practice, in support of Dyson's conjecture.

J. F. Rodriguez, J. A. Rueda, R. Ruffini

In a recent letter we have outlined some issues on GW 150914, we hereby give additional details. We analyze the event GW 150914 announced by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) as the gravitational-wave emission of a black-hole binary merger. We show that the parameters of the coalescing system and of the newly formed Kerr black-hole can be extracted from basic results of the gravitational-wave emission during the inspiraling and merger phases without sophisticate numerical simulations. Our strikingly accurate estimates are based on textbook formulas describing two different regimes: 1) the binary inspiraling analysis treated in Landau and Lifshitz textbook, 2) the plunge of a particle into a black-hole, treated in the Rees-Ruffini-Wheeler textbook as well as 3) the transition between these two regimes following Detweiler's treatment of a particle infalling with non-zero angular momentum onto a black-hole. It is stressed that in order to infer any astrophysical information on the masses of the system both regimes have to be independently and observationally constrained by LIGO, which does not appear to be the case.

Gabriel Farrugia, Jackson Levi Said, Matteo Luca Ruggiero

We investigate the four solar system tests of gravity - perihelion precession, light bending, Shapiro time delay, gravitational redshift - in $f(T)$ gravity. In particular, we investigate the solution derived by Ruggiero and Radicella, Phys. Rev. D 91, 104014 (2015), for a nondiagonal vierbein field for a polynomial $f(T) = T + \alpha T^n$, where $\alpha$ is a constant and $|n| \neq 1$. In this paper, we derive the solutions for each test, in which Weinberg's, Bodenner and Will's, Cattani et al. and Rindler and Ishak's methods are applied, Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity (Wiley, New York, 1972); Am. J. Phys. 71 (2003); Phys. Rev. D 87, 047503 (2013); Phys. Rev. D 76, 043006 (2007). We set a constraint on alpha for $n$ = 2, 3 by using data available from literature.

Elena Giusarma, Martina Gerbino, Olga Mena, Sunny Vagnozzi, Shirley Ho, Katherine Freese

The most recent measurements of the temperature and low-multipole polarization anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from the Planck satellite, when combined with galaxy clustering data from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) in the form of the full shape of the power spectrum, and with Baryon Acoustic Oscillation measurements, provide a $95\%$ confidence level (CL) upper bound on the sum of the three active neutrinos $\sum m _\nu< 0.183$ eV, among the tightest neutrino mass bounds in the literature, to date, when the same datasets are taken into account. This very same data combination is able to set, at $\sim70\%$ CL, an upper limit on $\sum m _\nu$ of $0.0968$ eV, a value that approximately corresponds to the minimal mass expected in the inverted neutrino mass hierarchy scenario. If high-multipole polarization data from Planck is also considered, the $95\%$ CL upper bound is tightened to $\sum m _\nu< 0.176$ eV. Further improvements are obtained by considering recent measurements of the Hubble parameter. These limits are obtained assuming a specific non-degenerate neutrino mass spectrum; they slightly worsen when considering other degenerate neutrino mass schemes. Current cosmological data, therefore, start to be mildly sensitive to the neutrino mass ordering. Low-redshift quantities, such as the Hubble constant or the reionization optical depth, play a very important role when setting the neutrino mass constraints. We also comment on the eventual shifts in the cosmological bounds on $\sum m_\nu$ when possible variations in the former two quantities are addressed.