Gravity Seminars

I will show how to derive analytic gravitational waveforms associated to the coalescence of a “hairy” black hole binary in Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity (ESGB). I will present the ESGB post-Newtonian (PN) Lagrangian and gravitational wave fluxes. The PN framework relies on reducing the black holes to point particles with scalar-field-dependent masses. In light of the first law of thermodynamics of ESGB black holes, I will show that this procedure amounts to fixing their Wald entropies. As a consequence, inspiraling ESGB black holes can grow scalar “hair” until they turn into naked singularities. I will then extend the scope of the PN approximation to the strong field regime near merger by generalizing the Effective-One-Body (EOB) formalism to ESGB gravity.