Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2603.05084

Distinguishability of magnetic massive black holes from environmental mimics with inspiral gravitational waves

Xulong Yuan·Xiangdong Zhang
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

In this work, we investigate the ppE waveform imprints induced by the external magnetic fields of Bertotti-Robinson and Bonnor-Melvin black holes, with the aim of distinguishing such magnetic effects from environmental influences. We first compute the ppE frequency-domain waveform for a small black hole inspiraling into a massive KBR black hole, which corresponds to a Kerr black hole embedded in an external magnetic field. We find that the leading-order correction arising from the magnetic field is at the $-2$ PN order relative to the quadrupole term, while the next-leading-order correction is at $-1.5$ PN, originating from the spin of the black hole. We further examine the effects of a spinning KBM black hole, whose leading-order magnetic correction is at $-3$ PN, whereas its spin-induced correction is also at $-1.5$ PN. The leading-order ppE corrections for both KBR and KBM black holes do not appear degenerate with any modified theory of gravity effects; nonetheless, we demonstrate that they resemble the gravitational pull contributions from additional matter with power-law distributions of index $\gamma=1$ and 0, respectively. To break the degeneracy with a single event, we adopt the statistic F in former research to discriminate between these two classes of beyond-vacuum GR effects using multiple gravitational wave events. We show even with multiple event statistic, it is not always efficient to distinguish real magnetic field effect from corresponding gravitational pull effect, especially for Bertotti-Robinson magnetic effect. For Bonnor-Melvin black hole, there is a transition value of $\rho_0$ estimated around $10^{-4}\text{kg}/\text{m}^3$ and corresponding $B\sim 10^{4}\text{T}$ above which real magnetic effect can be efficiently distinguished from gravitational pull and below the transition value it cannot.

Explore related subjects

gr-qc

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Xulong Yuan, Xiangdong Zhang. 2026-03-05. Distinguishability of magnetic massive black holes from environmental mimics with inspiral gravitational waves. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.05084

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗