Chi Tian, Stefano Anselmi, Matthew F. Carney, John T. Giblin Jr, James Mertens, Glenn Starkman

The curvature of a spacetime, either in a topological sense, or averaged over super-horizon-sized patches, is often equated with the global curvature term that appears in Friedmann's equation. In general, however, the Universe is inhomogeneous, and gravity is a nonlinear theory, thus any curvature perturbations violate the assumptions of the FLRW model; it is not necessarily true that local curvature, averaged over patches of constant-time surfaces, will reproduce the observational effects of global symmetry. Further, the curvature of a constant-time hypersurface is not an observable quantity, and can only be inferred indirectly. Here, we examine the behavior of curvature modes on hypersurfaces of a perturbed spacetime in an exact fully relativistic setting, and how this curvature corresponds with that inferred by observers. We also note the point at which observations become sensitive to the impact of curvature sourced by inhomogeneities on inferred average properties, finding general agreement with past literature.

Jose Luis Blázquez-Salcedo, Christian Knoll, Eugen Radu

We construct traversable wormholes in Einstein-Dirac-Maxwell theory in four spacetime dimensions, without needing any form of exotic matter. Restricting to a model with two massive fermions in a singlet spinor state, we show the existence of spherically symmetric asymptotically flat configurations which are free of singularities, representing localized states. These solutions satisfy a generalized Smarr relation, being connected with the extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes. They also possess a finite mass $M$ and electric charge $Q_e$, with $Q_e/M>1$. An exact wormhole solution with ungauged, massless fermions is also reported.

David Sloan

We present a new action which reproduces the cosmological sector of general relativity in both the Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) and Bianchi models. This action makes no reference to the scale factor, and is of a frictional type first examined by Herglotz. We demonstrate that the extremization of this action reproduces the usual dynamics of physical observables, and the symplectification of this action is the Einstein-Hilbert action for cosmological models. We end by discussing some of the increased explanatory power produced by considering the reduced physical ontology resulting from eliminating scale.

Zainab Nazari, Michele Cicoli, Katy Clough, Francesco Muia

Using numerical relativity simulations we study the dynamics of long-lived pseudo-topological objects called oscillons for a class of models inspired by axion-monodromy. We note that in some regions of the parameter space oscillons collapse to black holes - showing that the effects of gravity cannot be neglected - while in other regions they remain pseudo-stable or disperse.