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    Gravitational waves from extreme-mass-ratio systems in astrophysical environments

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    We establish a generic, fully-relativistic formalism to study gravitational-wave emission by extreme-mass-ratio systems in spherically-symmetric, non-vacuum black-hole spacetimes. The potential applications to astrophysical setups range from black holes accreting baryonic matter to those within axionic clouds and dark matter environments, allowing to assess the impact of the galactic potential, of accretion, gravitational drag and halo feedback on the generation and propagation of gravitational-waves. We apply our methods to a black hole within a halo of matter. We find fluid modes imparted to the gravitational-wave signal (a clear evidence of the black hole fundamental mode instability) and the tantalizing possibility to infer galactic properties from gravitational-wave measurements by sensitive, low-frequency detectors.Comment: v2. Supplemental Material added, minor improvements. Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

    Black holes in galaxies: environmental impact on gravitational-wave generation and propagation

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    We introduce a family of solutions of Einstein's gravity minimally coupled to an anisotropic fluid, describing asymptotically flat black holes with "hair"and a regular horizon. These spacetimes can describe the geometry of galaxies harboring supermassive black holes, and are extensions of Einstein clusters to include horizons. They are useful to constrain the environment surrounding astrophysical black holes, using electromagnetic or gravitational-wave observations. We compute the main properties of the geometry, including the corrections to the ringdown stage induced by the external matter and fluxes by orbiting particles. The leading order effect to these corrections is a gravitational-redshift, but gravitational-wave propagation is affected by the galactic potential in a nontrivial way, and may be characterized with future observatories.</p

    Destabilizing the fundamental mode of black holes: the elephant and the flea

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    Recent work applying the notion of pseudospectrum to gravitational physics showed that the quasinormal mode spectrum of black holes is unstable, with the possible exception of the longest-lived (fundamental) mode. The fundamental mode dominates the expected signal in gravitational wave astronomy, and there is no reason why it should have privileged status. We compute the quasinormal mode spectrum of two model problems where the Schwarzschild potential is perturbed by a small "bump"consisting of either a Pöschl-Teller potential or a Gaussian, and we show that the fundamental mode is destabilized under generic perturbations. We present phase diagrams and study a simple double-barrier toy problem to clarify the conditions under which the spectral instability occurs.</p

    A Weyl's law for black holes

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    International audienceWe discuss a Weyl's law for the quasi-normal modes of black holes that recovers the structural features of the standard Weyl's law for the eigenvalues of the Laplacian in compact regions. Specifically, the asymptotics of the counting function N(ω)N(\omega) of quasi-normal modes of (d+1)(d+1)-dimensional black holes follows a power-law N(ω)VoldeffωdN(\omega)\sim \mathrm{Vol}_d^{\mathrm{eff}}\omega^d, with Voldeff\mathrm{Vol}_d^{\mathrm{eff}} an effective volume determined by the light-trapping and decay properties of the black hole geometry. Closed forms are presented for the Schwarzschild black hole and a quasi-normal mode Weyl's law is proposed for generic black holes. As an application, such Weyl's law could provide a probe into the effective dimensionality of spacetime and the relevant resonant scales of actual astrophysical black holes, upon the counting of sufficiently many overtones in the observed ringdown signal of binary black hole mergers

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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