TUESDAY, July 28

LIGO/TAPIR Seminar, 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM, SCR 351 W Bridge
"Stirred, not shaken: The nonthermal Transient Universe from rotating black holes," Maurice Van Putten, Universite d'Orleans.

Abstract:

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) are the most exceptional nonthermal transient events in the sky that appear to be associated with black holes. Here, we model radiation mechanisms around rapidly rotating BHs for concurent emissions in high-energy photons and ionic contaminants along the spin axis and low-energy emissions from surrounding flows in forced turbulence. Supermassive BHs can hereby create
UHECRs about the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin (GZK) threshold in low-luminosity, intermittent active galactic nuclei (AGN), e.g., Seyfert galaxies consistent with recent Pierre Auger observations and variability in MGC 6-30-15. Steller mass BHs can hereby create GRBs in core-collapse supernovae (CC-SNe) and mergers of neutron stars with another neutron star or BH. We recover our model prediction for the intrinsic gamma-ray light curve from BH spin-down in a normalized average of 600 light curves of long GRBs (jointly with A.C. Gupta). We conclude that long GRBs are spin-powered. An accompanying long burst in gravitational radiation with negative chirp from surrounding matter asymptotes to 5.9 kHz/M, where M denotes the BH mass in units of one solar mass, e.g., about 2 kHz for NS-NS mergers. Thus, LIGO-Virgo promises novel metrology on black holes in CC-SNe and binary mergers by correlating two or
more detectors in the time-frequency domain. All-sky optical-radio surveys should be instrumental in identifying TOOs, e.g., CC-SNe and long radio-bursts from naked inner engines in binary mergers. Scaled to SgrA*, similar low-frequency gravitational waves may be relevant to LISA.