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Full-Text Articles in Physics
Astrophysical Bounds On Global Strings, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock
Astrophysical Bounds On Global Strings, Shane L. Larson, William A. Hiscock
All Physics Faculty Publications
Global topological defects produce nonzero stress energy throughout spacetime, and as a result can have observable gravitational influence on surrounding matter. Gravitational effects of global strings are used to place bounds on their cosmic abundance. The minimum separation between global strings is estimated by considering the defects' contribution to the cosmological energy density. More rigorous constraints on the abundance of global strings are constructed by examining the tidal forces such defects will have on observable astrophysical systems. The small number of observed tidally disrupted systems indicates there can be very few of these objects in the observable Universe.
Semiclassical Effects In Black Hole Interiors, William A. Hiscock, Shane L. Larson, Paul R. Anderson
Semiclassical Effects In Black Hole Interiors, William A. Hiscock, Shane L. Larson, Paul R. Anderson
All Physics Faculty Publications
First-order semiclassical perturbations to the Schwarzschild black hole geometry are studied within the black hole interior. The source of the perturbations is taken to be the vacuum stress-energy of quantized scalar, spinor, and vector fields, evaluated using analytic approximations developed by Page and others (for massless fields) and the DeWitt-Schwinger approximation (for massive fields). Viewing the interior as an anisotropic collapsing cosmology, we find that minimally or conformally coupled scalar fields, and spinor fields, decrease the anisotropy as the singularity is approached, while vector fields increase the anisotropy. In addition, we find that for massless fields of all spins, the …