Papers

The late-time ringdown dynamics of near-extremal black holes (BHs) are expected to be dominated by zero-damped modes (ZDMs), whose decay rates are parametrically suppressed relative to those of ordinary quasinormal modes. In this paper, we demonstrate that exact WKB methods provide an exceptionally powerful framework for analyzing the ZDM spectrum of near-extremal Reissner–Nordström (RN) BHs. Focusing on massless, neutral scalar modes propagating on an RN background, we present the full Stokes geometry derived from the radial eigenvalue problem and establish the corresponding exact quantization condition (EQC). Our analytic computation of the Voros symbols entering the EQC achieves higher-order accuracy for the ZDM spectrum compared to previous studies and is systematically improvable. Ergo, this work serves as a proof of concept for investigations of ZDM spectra of other systems using exact WKB methods.

For fifty years the Blandford–Znajek mechanism has been a mechanism and not an exact solution: force-free electrodynamics on a prescribed metric, with the jet's own field carrying no weight. Here that field gravitates. A split monopole weighs as much as a magnetic monopole, so its self-gravity is the magnetic Reissner–Nordström geometry; two copies glued across an equatorial current sheet put hole, disk and jet-driving flux into one spacetime, and force-free plasma makes a magnetosphere of it. Three things then follow that no test-field calculation can see. First, a steady jet is impossible. A stationary horizon cannot be heated but a slipping magnetosphere necessarily heats it, so the only stationary state is a dead one corotating with the hole, and a working jet is a black hole in decay at rates the field equations fix rather than assume. Second, flux enters the laws of black-hole mechanics as a charge, sharing one extremality budget with spin. That budget caps the jet power at $c^5/48G$ whatever the mass. Third, the lifetime output is finite: a maximally spinning hole delivers $1-e^{1/4}/\sqrt2=9.2\%$ of its mass and grows its horizon area by exactly $\sqrt e$. The horizon's own moment of inertia vanishes with the irrational exponent $(\sqrt{17}-1)/2$ set by the near-horizon throat, and what is left is a rotating hole whose angular momentum has passed to its own field.

Ultralight bosons could trigger superradiant instabilities in rapidly spinning black holes, forming oscillating clouds while extracting rotational energy. We consider an extended, superradiance-informed spin distribution model that characterizes possible environment-induced spin variations and compare its predictions with the observed population of merging black hole binaries in the Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalogs (GWTCs). We find that the mass-spin relation predicted by a scalar boson with mass $m_b\sim 10^{-12} \,\rm eV$ is consistent with the GWTCs, with increasing significance from GWTC-3.0 to 5.0. The Bayes factor reaches $\ln B \approx 7.8$ for GWTC-5.0. Intriguingly, this mass range largely coincides with a previous study based on a waveform analysis of the GW190728 gravitational wave event. Our findings provide compelling evidence that a superradiance-informed spin distribution model is highly compatible with the expanding binary black hole population dataset.

This study investigates an Einstein-nonlinear electrodynamic black hole generated by a Yukawa-screened electromagnetic potential and examines its thermal properties through the calculation of the fundamental thermodynamic potentials and variables. The effect of thermal fluctuations on the calculated standard thermodynamic quantities is analyzed through two different correction terms added to the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. In this work, the thermodynamic behavior in cases where the black hole has a relatively large event horizon is investigated using a logarithmic correction term representing corrections arising from quantum fields in constant backgrounds. In addition, thermal fluctuations occurring in cases where the event horizon is small are analyzed through an exponential correction term added to the entropy, reflecting non-perturbative quantum effects. Finally, the thermodynamic functions for all obtained cases are examined graphically, and the stability properties of the black hole are discussed in detail.

We study the dynamics of a radiating relativistic star in the presence of the electromagnetic field and the cosmological constant. The evolution of the model originates from an initially static configuration. The temporal behaviour of the system is governed by a nonlinear second order equation which is studied using a phase plane analysis. We show that in the general case, with all physical parameters present, fold bifurcations arise which are related to nonzero charge and cosmological constant. Our treatment clarifies earlier results and we extend our study to the general solution space. We obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the temporal evolution for a shear-free configuration during collapse.

Effective-source formulations provide a practical route to gravitational self-force (GSF) calculations when singular retarded fields cannot be handled directly mode by mode. Up to now, only frequency-domain first-order GSF for circular orbits in Schwarzschild spacetime was obtained with the effective-source method. We construct and implement a frequency-domain extended effective-source (EES) formulation for first-order Lorenz-gauge GSF on eccentric orbits in Schwarzschild spacetime. The central obstacle is that radial libration forces the physical puncture and effective source to switch between interior and exterior branches, limiting their differentiability and producing slow spectral convergence. We overcome this obstruction by analytically extending both branches across the libration region and solving the coupled Lorenz-gauge perturbation equations for the resulting smooth extended sources. This provides an end-to-end gravitational EES implementation for eccentric motion and validates a computational ingredient needed for extending frequency-domain effective-source calculations toward second order.

To overcome the failure of the conventional non-relativistic description of statistics in strong gravitational fields, we develop a covariant theory for a photon gas in curved spacetime, starting from the Boltzmann equation and employing the relaxation time approximation. The transport coefficients are computed up to second order, which are not a massless limit of the massive-particle results due to the fundamentally different phase-space geometry of null particles. At second order, the gravitational field renders the coefficients tensor-valued and induces transverse fluxes, analogous to the Hall effect. Using the first-order results, we derive relativistic generalizations of Fick's and Fourier's laws and obtain the radiation diffusion equation for spherically symmetric accretion disks. This provides a covariant description of radiative transport in strong gravitational fields for high-energy astrophysical applications.

Topological defects are ubiquitous in physics, arising from condensed matter physics to the early universe. Although there exist many universal scaling laws for correlations between topological defects, such as Porod scaling, the fingerprint of topological defect cores has remained largely unexplored. Here, we discover a universal scaling law in the region $k>1/\xi$, where $\xi$ is the healing length of the topological defects, taking the scaling of the form factor $S_f \propto k^{-(d+p+2)}$, where $d$ is the spatial dimension and $p$ is the defect codimension. We analytically prove that this exponent originates from a universal V-shaped cusp at the defect core and is independent of the underlying system and dynamics. Numerical simulations verify this scaling law in four typical frameworks: the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau and Gross-Pitaevskii equations in the weak-coupling regime, the gauge/gravity duality model in the strong-coupling regime, and the Klein-Gordon equation in the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker background in cosmology. Our work provides a new probe for studying topological defects in systems ranging from superconductors to cosmological phase transitions.

We study thermal energy fluctuations of cosmological horizons within the canonical ensemble framework, treating the horizon as a thermodynamic system characterized by temperature and entropy. The analysis is performed for a class of gravitational theories, including (n+1)-dimensional Einstein gravity, Gauss-Bonnet gravity, Lovelock gravity, and models incorporating quantum deformed entropy corrections. We find that horizon energy fluctuations stabilize to a constant value in the asymptotic de Sitter limit, independent of the underlying gravity theory and robust against higher-curvature and quantum corrections. It is worth mentioning that in its final de Sitter state, the universe obeys holographic equipartition condition and in consequence the horizon entropy attains a maximum constant value, just like an ordinary macroscopic system. These findings establish a unified thermodynamic picture in which entropy maximization, holographic equipartition, and the suppression of energy fluctuations collectively characterize the asymptotic de Sitter universe as the equilibrium end state of cosmic evolution.

Recently, we constructed analytical purely electric and purely magnetic black-hole solutions in Einstein–Euler–Heisenberg theory, while the corresponding dyonic solutions were obtained numerically \cite{Luo:2026srx}. Motivated by the recent analytical construction of a dyonic black hole at the special coupling locus $b=a/2$ \cite{Ahmed:2026ufj}, we revisit the general dyonic sector. We show that exact analytical dyonic black-hole solutions can be constructed for nonlinear couplings satisfying $2b>a$, without imposing the restriction $b=a/2$. The mass function is expressed in closed form in terms of the Lauricella hypergeometric function. In particular, our construction yields an exact dyonic solution for the Euler–Heisenberg coupling $b=7a/4$. The solution of Ref.~\cite{Ahmed:2026ufj} is recovered in the limiting case $2b\rightarrow a$.

Motivated by [Phys. Rev. D. 107, 064019 (2023)], we develop a unified and model-independent framework for the spectroscopy of photon frequency shifts in generic static, spherically symmetric spacetimes. Working with a line element characterized by three arbitrary radial metric functions, we derive exact expressions for the conserved quantities of massive and massless probes, the conditions for circular timelike geodesics, the local-emission-angle-dependent photon impact parameter, and the corresponding local redshift and blueshift branches measured by distant static observers. The formalism is further extended to include the line-of-sight peculiar motion of the source and the local propagation of photons in a nonmagnetized cold plasma, thereby identifying the gravitational, orbital, and dispersive factors entering the frequency-shift signal under the stated assumptions. We also show that, in vacuum, the same geometric structures governing orbital spectroscopy determine the photon sphere and the shadow impact parameter whenever an external null critical orbit is present. To make the framework suitable for deformed compact-object models, we construct a perturbative expansion around Schwarzschild geometry up to second order in a dimensionless deformation parameter, obtaining explicit corrections to the orbital energy, angular momentum, emitter four-velocity, photon impact parameter, and the vacuum and plasma frequency shifts. We apply the formalism to regular black holes from nonlinear electrodynamics, the Simpson–Visser black-bounce spacetime, and the Fisher–Janis–Newman–Winicour–Wyman geometry. These examples show that the same local spectroscopic language can be used across regular-black-hole, black-bounce, wormhole, and scalar-supported horizonless sectors.

We identify a boundary-geometry-driven mechanism for the dynamical formation of marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) in vacuum general relativity. Mild three-dimensional anisotropies evolve inside a compact Cauchy domain whose effective isotropic thickness remains controlled, while the generalized boundary mean curvature can increase during either contracting or expanding boundary evolution. This drives the boundary across Yau's geometric threshold, forcing MOTS formation from initially untrapped data. We further interpret the characteristic shear construction of Ref.~\cite{MondalYau2026} as the null manifestation of the same anisotropic vacuum dynamics. The result provides a purely vacuum physical realization of MOTS formation through global geometric effects, without invoking a short-pulse concentration mechanism for gravitational radiation.

In this work, we investigate the accretion properties of an electrically charged, static, spherically symmetric black hole in Kalb-Ramond (KR) gravity, where a dimensionless parameter $l$ characterizes spontaneous Lorentz symmetry-breaking. We first constrain the free charge and KR parameter space, $(Q,l)$, by comparing the predicted shadow radius of this family of solutions with the bounds inferred from Event Horizon Telescope observations of Sagittarius A*. The inclusion of electric charge introduces a degeneracy between $Q$ and $l$, enlarging the region compatible with the observed shadow size and yielding the broad constraint $-0.3900 \leq l \leq 0.1898$, with part of the compatible parameter space extending into the naked-singularity sector. We then investigate relativistic accretion disks around the charged KR black hole within the above constraints. For geometrically thin disks, we compute the time averaged energy flux, temperature distribution, emission spectrum, time averaged torque, and mass-to-radiation conversion efficiency, finding that the radiative output increases for higher values of $l$, while lower values of $l$ suppress it. Furthermore, when coupled with the electric charge this effect is amplified. For geometrically thick, constant-angular momentum tori-shaped disks, Lorentz symmetry-breaking shifts the characteristic orbital radii, compresses the radial extent of equilibrium configurations, narrows the interval supporting finite equilibrium tori, and shifts the stationary-fluid topology toward open and unconfined configurations outside that interval. These results show how charge and spontaneous Lorentz symmetry-breaking jointly affect observational constraints and the structure and emission properties of black hole accretion flows, providing potential signatures of KR gravity in the strong-gravity regime.

We propose quasicrystalline inflation. Six quasiperiodic phases decompose into three phonons and three phasons. It turns out that a coherent pure-phason displacement can generate a local power dipole while the linear traceless quadrupole vanishes. From spatially varying quadratic effective field theory, we derive off-diagonal correlations whose momentum transfer is restricted to integer combinations of the six icosahedral wavevectors. These correlated off-diagonal signals provide a characteristic observational signature of primordial quasiperiodic order, primordial diffraction.

We investigate whether hairy black holes generated through spontaneous symmetry breaking in Einstein-Scalar-Gauss-Bonnet (ESGB) theory, involving a complex scalar field with a global $U(1)$ symmetry, can be compatible with cosmological evolution. To this end, we introduce the ESGB theory with a scalar self-interaction that becomes relevant on cosmological scales while remaining negligible near the black hole. Owing to the time dependence of the GB term on cosmological scales, the scalar field dynamics in the evolving FLRW background differ qualitatively from those in the nearly static black hole background. In particular, for scalar-GB couplings compatible with hairy black hole formation, the effective potential supports a symmetry-broken vacuum throughout inflation. However, after inflation, a decelerated expansion changes the sign of the GB term, temporarily making the effective potential unbounded from below. As the GB contribution subsequently decreases, the scalar self-interaction eventually dominates and restores the symmetry. Within this schematic framework, we derive stringent constraints on the coupling strengths, the cutoff scale, and the black hole mass, which primarily arise for avoiding efficient tachyonic amplification of the scalar field perturbations during the unbounded phase. For cutoff scales compatible with both cosmological evolution and scalar hair formation, we find that only ultralight black holes with masses of the order of a few grams can develop scalar hair, identifying them as hairy primordial black holes.

The bispectrum of cosmological perturbations is an important probe of inflation and the underlying particle physics. However, calculating it becomes challenging in inflation models where inflaton dynamics is dominated by quantum diffusion rather than slow-roll, especially in the multi-field case. In this paper, employing the stochastic-$\delta \mathcal{N}$ formalism, we propose a Monte Carlo-based method to calculate the bispectrum in the squeezed limit, as an extension of the method for the power spectrum that we previously proposed. Our method involves generating paths of inflatons' time evolution that branch only several times, avoiding nested path generation, which incurs a prohibitive computational cost. As numerical demonstrations, we apply the proposed method to single- and double-field chaotic inflation for validation, and to hybrid inflation with mild waterfall, for which, to the best of our knowledge, the bispectrum is calculated for the first time in this work.

We study the linear onset of matter-induced scalarization for a static black hole surrounded by two spatially separated thin matter shells. We assume that the conformal matter coupling is unity on the scalar-free background and that its logarithmic derivative vanishes there. The scalar perturbation then decouples from the metric and matter perturbations at first order, while the invariant surface traces of the shells give singular terms in the scalar equation. For a static spherical black-hole exterior with no bulk scalar effective-mass term between the shells, the onset reduces to the finite-rank condition $$ 1-a_1-a_2+(1-\chi)a_1a_2=0, \qquad \chi=\frac{{\cal S}(R_2)}{{\cal S}(R_1)}, $$ where $a_j$ is the attractive strength of shell $j$ normalized by its one–shell threshold on the same background and ${\cal S}$ is the static radial resistance. This relation shows that two individually subcritical shells can collectively destabilize the scalar-free black hole. We derive the critical scalar cloud in closed form and verify numerically, in the Schwarzschild probe problem, that a growing mode with a finite growth rate appears beyond the threshold. For an exact scalar-free background consisting of three Schwarzschild regions joined by two Israel shells, we separately derive the static onset condition and the corresponding critical cloud. The exact Israel trace also exhibits a sign transition whose light-shell limit occurs at the Schwarzschild photon sphere.

Inflationary magnetogenesis provides a promising mechanism for generating primordial large-scale magnetic fields, but faces challenges such as the strong coupling problem and backreaction issues. In this paper, we extend the Ratra model by introducing a coupling between the electromagnetic field and the background geometry, parameterized as $K(R)I^2(\phi)$. Starting from a general action with $f^2(R,\phi)F_{\mu\nu}F^{\mu\nu}$, we adopt $f^2(R,\phi)=K(R)I^2(\phi)$ as a concrete realization. Rather than focusing on the slow-roll inflationary stage (which reduces to the standard Ratra scenario), we concentrate on the post-inflationary reheating epoch, where the broken-power-law evolution of the scale factor and coupling function across the inflation-to-reheating transition allows us to derive analytic expressions for the magnetic and electric energy density spectra. Three key theoretical constraints are imposed on the model parameter space: the strong coupling condition, the backreaction constraint, and the CMB isotropy requirement. We obtain predictions for the present-day magnetic field strength $B_0$ and coherence length $L_{c0}$ for various combinations of the inflationary energy scale $H_f$ and the reheating temperature $T_r$. By comparing with observational constraints from radio observations and Fermi-LAT gamma-ray data, we demonstrate that the inflationary energy scale $H_f$, the reheating temperature $T_r$, the parameter $\beta$, and the e-folding numbers $N_f$, $N_r$ must satisfy stringent joint constraints. This work provides a viable theoretical framework for inflationary magnetogenesis that simultaneously satisfies theoretical consistency conditions and current observational bounds, with the reheating-stage nonlinear MHD evolution serving as a crucial ingredient for producing observationally compatible magnetic fields.

We investigate the equilibrium structure and stability of selfbound quark stars in the framework of regularized four-dimensional Einstein–Gauss–Bonnet (4DEGB) gravity, employing the perturbative QCD equation of state of Fraga, Kurkela and Vuorinen [1]. The equation of state, parameterised by a single renormalization-scale parameter $X$, contains no effective bag constant and defines the stellar surface entirely through the vanishing of the quark-matter pressure. We solve the modified Tolman-Oppenheimer–Volkoff equations derived from the scalar–tensor formulation of 4DEGB gravity for $X \in \{3, 4\}$ and Gauss–Bonnet coupling $\alpha \in \{0, 1, 10\}\,\mathrm{km}^2$. For the soft EOS ($X = 3$), the maximum mass increases from $2.0431\,M_\odot$ (GR) to $2.5013\,M_\odot$ at $\alpha = 10\,\mathrm{km}^2$, with only the latter entering the PSR~J0952$-$0607 mass band. For the stiff EOS($X = 4$), the GR baseline already yields $3.0415\,M_\odot$, and all configurations exceed both the GW190814 secondary mass and the PSR~J0952$-$0607 constraint. The compactness $C = M/R$ at maximum mass ranges from $0.2531$ to $0.3123$ across all configurations, remaining well below the Buchdahl bound throughout. Radial profiles of the squared speed of sound confirm that $c_s^2 < 1/3$ holds pointwise throughout the stellar interior for all parameter choices, establishing that the quark matter remains sub-conformal and causal inside the maximum-mass star. These results demonstrate that higher-curvature corrections in 4DEGB gravity systematically enhance the maximum supported mass of perturbative QCD quark stars, with the stiff ($X = 4$) branch already exceeding the most massive compact objects currently observed even at the GR level, while the soft ($X = 3$) branch requires $\alphaGB \sim 10\,\mathrm{km}^2$ to approach those thresholds.

Effective and thermodynamic derivations of gravity theory in the context of generalized entropy can give rise to multiple, and potentially varying, gravitational couplings, raising the question of which quantity should be identified with the physically measured Newton constant. Motivated by this ambiguity, we formulate the notion of gravitational susceptibility of the horizon. In spacetimes containing multiple horizons, if the entropy is a function on a multi-horizon state space, $S=S(A_1,A_2,\cdots,A_n)$, then the derivatives of the entropy with respect to individual horizon areas define the horizon gravitational response coefficients. Different horizons may possess distinct gravitational responses without requiring multiple fundamental gravitational couplings, analogous to direction-dependent response coefficients in macroscopic media. This framework naturally suggests the possibility that horizon entropies (such as the cosmological apparent horizon and a black hole horizon) can influence one another, which could explain the black hole-cosmology coupled "black hole mass growth" previously discussed in the literature.

We study scalar and electromagnetic perturbations of the root–Kerr object. Its source-free exterior carries the electromagnetic field obtained in the vanishing-mass limit of the Kerr–Newman black hole, while its physical source is a rotating disk with an essential distributional rim contribution. For a massless charged scalar, the minimally coupled Klein–Gordon equation separates into a confluent-Heun (CHE) radial equation with a direct coupling between the scalar and background charges. We give the associated Nekrasov–Shatashvili (NS) dictionary and show that the disk is an ordinary radial point. For electromagnetic pertubations, we derive the equations for the radiative Newman–Penrose Maxwell scalars directly. They have the same confluent-Heun structure, but a Maxwell perturbation has no bulk coupling to the background potential. Charge-dependent photon scattering data therefore cannot be fixed by the exterior equation alone. We formulate the disk/rim boundary-data problem, identify the response data required to convert exact CHE/NS connection coefficients into a physical scattering matrix, and show how all-spin helicity-flip Compton information constrains the response on the radiative subspace. The analysis separates exact exterior propagation and amplitude matching from the additional source dynamics required for a microscopic response.

Black holes hold considerable fascination for the general public and students alike, and are commonly included in general-science courses on astronomy or modern physics. But teaching about the basics of black holes poses a considerable challenge: Any rigorous description requires concepts and techniques from general relativity, Einstein's theory of geometry and gravitation. And any half-way rigorous introduction to that theory, including the required mathematical tools, is significantly beyond the level of general-science courses. Inevitably, accounts of relativistic physics at the introductory undergraduate level make use of analogies, approximations and simplified models to teach about topics like black holes, gravitational waves, gravitational lensing, or cosmology. The purpose of this article is to given an account of one particular set of analogies for teaching about black holes, all of which are based on modelling the motions of observers in the vicinity of the black hole and rely on the concept of (relative) speed to describe properties of the black hole. While most elements of what I am about to describe can be found in the existing literature, I am not aware of any text that attempts to pull them together into a unified picture at a suitable level of presentation for undergraduate-level teaching; that is the goal of the present text.

We study a phenomenological fixed-ADM prescription for an extended-uncertainty-principle (EUP) correction to the Schwarzschild exterior. Rather than treat mass constancy as a consequence of the EUP, we hold the charge measured at spatial infinity fixed so that we can compare exteriors at the same physical mass. We impose the EUP-shifted horizon radius and Hawking temperature and select the slowest admissible inverse-power representative. Its Einstein tensor defines an effective anisotropic tensor, but we do not infer an independent matter model, quantum state, or perturbation theory from that definition. For a positive EUP parameter, the effective energy density is negative throughout the exterior, while the transverse null and strong energy conditions fail over an extended radial region. The area entropy and the formal entropy obtained from the reduced relation $\mathrm{d}M=T\,\mathrm{d}S$ disagree at leading order; we interpret this mismatch as evidence that the thermodynamic description lacks work terms or an action-based entropy law, not as a definite EUP entropy correction. An explicit one-parameter family with the same mass, horizon, and temperature shows that the orbit, lensing, and test-field eikonal shifts depend on the chosen representative. Our results therefore characterize the minimal member of a phenomenological family rather than universal consequences of the EUP.

Precise calibration of LIGO's strain readout plays a vital role in our ability to extract information from gravitational-wave detections. We present a comparative analysis of two independent direct-force calibration methods: the Newtonian Calibrator (NCal) and Photon Calibrator (PCal) systems. Currently, LIGO relies solely on the PCal system as its absolute calibration reference. To facilitate comparison, a series of direct-force injections were performed using the NCal and PCal systems at the LIGO Hanford observatory just after the completion of the third observing run. We compute the ratio of the measured to expected strain amplitudes for every injection. For each injection frequency across a 30 Hz band, the ratios of NCal and PCal differ by $\sim$0.5-1%, demonstrating a small systematic difference between the two systems. This offset highlights the importance of maintaining multiple independent calibration references to validate LIGO's calibration.

Theoretical models suggest that the adiabatic growth of a black hole immersed in dark matter can lead to the formation of high density regions of dark matter, known as “spikes”, near the black hole event horizon. The density of these spikes is determined theoretically and observationally to be a power law of the form $\rho(r) \propto r^{-\gamma_\text{sp}}$. It has been shown that the spike can potentially have a detectable impact on the emitted gravitational waves and shadow radius of the central black hole. In this work, we model the dark matter spike using a real scalar field with a non-standard potential. More specifically we “reverse engineer” the equations of motion to find a potential for the scalar field that permits a solution to the equations of motion with desired energy density and reasonable background geometry. We show that the emerging geometry is testable. In addition, the fact that the solution is derived from a covariant action makes it possible to study gravitational perturbations of the black hole in the presence of a spike including the backreaction of the spike.

Motivated by the recent extension of Herrera's gravitational complexity to arbitrary higher-dimensional spacetimes, we investigate exact compact-star models that satisfy the vanishing-complexity condition within the Finch–Skea geometry in $(n+2)$-dimensional Einstein gravity. By combining the higher-dimensional Einstein field equations with the generalized complexity formalism, we obtain a new class of exact interior solutions describing anisotropic fluid spheres with zero complexity. The physical properties of these models are evaluated by analyzing the behavior of the matter variables, pressure anisotropy, and equilibrium conditions, alongside the standard requirements of regularity, energy conditions, causality, and stability. We further explore the influence of spacetime dimensionality on the structural characteristics of the stellar configurations, demonstrating that the presence of extra dimensions significantly modifies the internal matter distribution while preserving physical viability. The solutions presented here represent the first exact higher-dimensional Finch–Skea compact-star models constructed within this recently developed generalized complexity framework \cite{choudas}. These results provide a natural extension of zero-complexity stellar configurations beyond four-dimensional General Relativity and offer a robust framework for investigating self-gravitating systems in higher- dimensional gravity.

Recently, we introduced a geometric object analogous to an orthonormal frame in the Cartan formalism to study the parameter space of quantum systems; we called it $\mathcal{N}$-bein, with $\mathcal{N}$ being the number of parameters that characterize the quantum system. Acting as the “square root” of the quantum geometric tensor (QGT), the $\mathcal{N}$-bein allows us to define new tensors to improve our understanding of the structure beneath the parameter space of quantum mechanics. In this work, we extend this mathematical framework surrounding the $\mathcal{N}$-bein to analyze the parameter space of quantum systems with degenerate spectra. As in the non-degenerate case, we define a non-Abelian two-state QGT to identify possible transitions between degenerate states after two consecutive parameter variations. Additionally, using the Wilczek-Zee connection, we introduce a torsion-like tensor as the covariant derivative of the $\mathcal{N}$-bein. This torsion captures the noncommutativity of successive parameter variations and coincides with the antisymmetric part of the two-state QGT. We also present a geometrical formulation using differential forms and discuss the physical implications of the newly defined tensors. Furthermore, we construct several gauge-invariant observables from the $\mathcal{N}$-bein and its derivatives to highlight the utility of the new tensors. Finally, to illustrate the convenience and applications of this formalism, we apply the theoretical framework to a system of coupled harmonic oscillators immersed in an electric field. The coupling between the oscillators results in a degenerate system. Thus, using the new formalism, we found correlations among the quantum states quantified by the new invariants.

The study of the dynamics of regular black holes is an emergent area of research. Recent works have discussed how to deform the Einstein field equations to regularize spherically symmetric black hole solutions due to the introduction of a new physics scale acting as regulator. In this exploratory paper, we consider for the first time the problem of constructing field equations in which the regularization scale is a dynamical field. Such field equations may provide an effective description of the evolution of the cores of regular black holes due to the backreaction of matter, and a novel avenue for constructing alternative dynamical solutions of theoretical and phenomenological interest. We discuss a general family of field equations describing spherically symmetric gravity coupled to a scalar field, and study whether the sector with a constant scalar field contains solutions describing static regular black holes with no additional physics scales aside from the ones provided by the scalar field. We show that this question can be reduced to solving a linear partial differential equation for the coupling functions between the scalar and the metric degrees of freedom.

Building on Jacobson's thermodynamics derivation of Einstein field equations, the "generalized entropy and varying-G" (GEVAG) framework was proposed to consistently incorporate generalized horizon entropy $S=f(A)/4G$ into both the thermodynamics and the geometry of spacetime. This leads to an effective gravitational coupling $G_\text{eff}=G/f'(A)$. A related "entropy-gravity correspondence" (EGC) instead is equivalent to promoting this horizon relation to a radially varying bulk coupling $G_\text{eff}(r)$. We clarify the similarities and fundamental distinctions between these approaches. Although they share the same horizon consistency relation, their global causal structures and asymptotic geometries can differ substantially. In addition, the radial prescription of EGC introduces an additional ambiguity for multi-center configurations. We further examine a near-horizon extension of GEVAG, which restores the equivalence between thermodynamic and ADM masses that is absent in the horizon-only formulation. We then discuss the implications of these different prescriptions for the Bekenstein bound. The Bekenstein bound provides a surprising link between $G_\text{eff}$ in near horizon GEVAG, EGC, and the one obtained in the recent $f(R)$-reconstruction approach of generalized entropy geometry via Wald entropy. Finally, we raise the most important question: what exactly is the $G$ measured in laboratories?

We derive a set of on-shell recursion relations for amplitudes in worldline quantum field theory (WQFT), an effective theory of gravity coupled to a massive worldline which is relevant for computing classical gravitational observables. We overcome the poor large-$z$ falloff of amplitudes under an all-line complex momentum deformation by deriving and exploiting a new soft-graviton theorem in the presence of a worldline. This theorem generalizes the leading (Weinberg) and subleading soft theorems with additional contributions due to soft emission from the worldline. Our main result is a $d$-dimensional recursion formula, expressing any $n$-graviton rational amplitude in terms of lower-point amplitudes from WQFT and pure gravity. Using the soft-worldline theorem, we can obtain amplitudes with any number of external worldline fluctuations from the corresponding all-graviton amplitudes, making the recursion sufficient to construct any rational amplitude of the theory. We verify our results by explicitly computing two-graviton and three-graviton amplitudes.