Physics

Dr. Sayantani Bhattacharyya
IIT Kanpur

We know that for many important astrophysical phenomena, gravity is the most dominating force. The key equation that can explain such astronomical events is called Einstein equation, the simplest possible classical equation for gravity. But it turns out that these `simplest' equations are extremely complicated to solve even numerically, for a generic situation. For example, the recent observation of gravitational waves, which is due to the merging of two black holes, needed months of very extensive numerical analysis of Einstein equation. 

In this talk we would like to develop a new perturbative technique to solve Einstein equation, in presence of dynamical black hole(s). We shall see that the gravitational force field around deformed black holes (like the ones that are involved in `black hole merger' events) simplifies a lot in large number of dimensions so that we could set-up a perturbation series in its inverse power.

Our method establishes a duality between a black hole system in gravity and a thin membrane or bubble, embedded in flat space. Gravitational radiation out of a dynamical black hole is precisely mapped to the energy radiation from this fluctuating bubble. 
We hope, eventually, we would be able to use our technique to have more analytic control over astronomical events like `black hole merger' by mapping it to much simpler events like merging of these dual bubbles in flat space.