Some Aspects of Perturbation Theory and Wave Propagation in Black Hole Space-times

Majumdar, Tamoghna (2016) Some Aspects of Perturbation Theory and Wave Propagation in Black Hole Space-times. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

PDF (MS dissertation of Tamoghna Majumdar (14MR004)) Tamoghna_thesis.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (439kB)

Abstract

The recent detection of gravitational waves has marked the beginning of a new era in observational astronomy. The progress of technology, which allowed us to look beyond the visible spectrum and view the universe in all its glory through the electromagnetic radiation emitted by it, has now opened up a new window of opportunity in our quest to understand the universe. This detection of gravitational waves, apart form being yet another triumphant vindication of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, will allow us to study those objects in the universe which were hitherto impossible to do with traditional astronomy - black holes. We are now at a point where we can completely characterize the features of these mysterious objects predicted by Einstein's theory by studying the gravitational waves emitted by them. The features of the gravitational waves emitted by a black hole - described in terms of the so-called quasi-normal modes (QNMs) - have been studied extensively for the simplest model of the black hole, which is described by the Schwarzschild solution to Einstein's equation. However, the central attributes of this model, namely the fact that it is a vacuum solution, its asymptotic atness, and time independence - will have to be done away with either partially or completely if we are to describe a black hole embedded in a cosmological background whose properties are well-established in theory and backed by observations. This thesis is devoted to a study of the QNMs of a black hole in a cosmological background, the description of which is given by the Vaidya-Einstein-Schwarzschild metric.

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