Columbia Physicists Say Gravity's Fields Can Break and Reconnect Like Solar Flares
A reformulation of Einstein's equations that resembles plasma physics hints at a 'gravitational reconnection' that could release energy in black hole mergers, though it remains theory.
Solar flares happen when magnetic field lines in a plasma snap apart and reattach, dumping stored energy into particles. Physicists at Columbia University and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile now argue that something analogous may be hiding inside Einstein's theory of gravity. They call it "gravitational reconnection."
The proposal comes from Luca Comisso of Columbia's departments of Astronomy and Physics and Felipe A. Asenjo of Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. Their paper, "Reconnection of Gravitational Fields," appears in Physical Review D. It builds on an earlier paper, "Frozen-In Gravitational Fields," by Asenjo, Maricarmen A. Winkler and Comisso in Physical Review Letters, which identified constraints on how spacetime geometry can change.
The key step was a mathematically equivalent rewrite of Einstein's equations that looks like the equations of plasma physics. That made hidden constraints visible. In plasmas, magnetic field lines are "frozen in" under ideal conditions, until those conditions fail and the lines break and reconnect. The team argues that gravity has the same pattern.
There is a twist. Spacetime has four dimensions, three of space and one of time, so gravity is described not with one-dimensional lines but with two-dimensional "sheets." The researchers stress that the sheets are mathematical objects, not physical surfaces. When the ideal conditions that keep the gravitational connections intact fail, the connections can change, and that is reconnection.
"When they break and reconnect, they release energy," Comisso said. "Some implications are hidden in the equations," he added, and the framework "helps us predict some patterns of the space-time."
The most likely testing ground is black hole mergers. Full numerical simulations of those events are computationally expensive, and the team says its rules could complement them by helping estimate energy release and identify signatures that might show up in gravitational-wave data such as that from LIGO.
The caveat is large. The work is purely theoretical. It has not been shown to operate in real astrophysical settings, and no one has observed it. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA. Whether the effect is strong enough to leave a mark in detector data is the next question.
Plasma reconnection is well studied because it can be seen directly on the Sun and in lab experiments, and physicists have long looked for gravitational counterparts. The new paper does not claim to have found one in data. It claims that the mathematics of Einstein's theory allows it and spells out the conditions. Independent groups will now check the derivation and look for the effect in numerical simulations of colliding black holes, the first practical test.
