Stability of relativistic tidal response against small potential modification

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether small environmental modifications affect the stability of a black hole's tidal response, finding that Love numbers are sensitive while dissipation numbers remain stable, impacting gravitational wave tests of gravity.

Contribution

It introduces a scattering theory approach to analyze the stability of relativistic tidal Love and dissipation numbers against environmental perturbations.

Findings

Love numbers are sensitive to environmental modifications.

Dissipation numbers are less affected by small background changes.

In composite systems, tidal numbers approximately sum over components.

Abstract

The tidal response of compact objects in an inspiraling binary system is measured by a set of tidal Love and dissipation numbers imprinted in the gravitational waveforms. While a four-dimensional black hole in vacuum within General Relativity has vanishing Love numbers, a black hole in alternative theories of gravity can acquire non-vanishing Love numbers. The dissipation numbers may quantify Planckian corrections at the horizon scale. These properties will allow a test of classical theories of gravity in the strong-field regime with gravitational-wave observation. Since black holes are not in the exact vacuum environment in astrophysical situations, the following question arises: can the environment affect the tidal response? In this paper, we investigate the stability of the tidal response of a Schwarzschild black hole for frequency-dependent tidal-field perturbations against a small modification of the background. Our analysis relies on the scattering theory, which overcomes difficulties in computing the relativistic tidal Love numbers. The tidal Love and dissipation numbers can be understood from the property of sufficiently low-frequency scattering waves. We show that the tidal Love numbers are sensitive to the property of the modification. Therefore, we need careful consideration of the environment around the black hole in assessing the deviation of the underlying theory of gravity from General Relativity with the Love numbers. The modification has less impact on the dissipation numbers, indicating that quantifying the existence of the event horizon with them is not spoiled. We also demonstrate that in a composite system, i.e., a compact object with environmental effects, the Love and dissipation numbers are approximately determined by the sum of the numbers of each component.