Luca Santoni

A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2026)074

We investigate the fully relativistic dynamical tidal response of neutron stars up to second order in the frequency. Combining the worldline effective field theory for extended gravitating bodies with perturbation theory of relativistic stellar models, we derive the tidal deformation induced by an external time-dependent field, including a universal logarithmic running term. In the effective theory, we work in dimensional regularization and, through a consistent matching procedure, obtain for the first time the complete leading-order dynamical tidal corrections to both the conservative dynamics and the gravitational-wave signal of compact binaries, including the scheme-dependent finite terms in addition to the running. We show that, in the relativistic regime, dynamical effects cannot be fully captured by mode excitations alone. The magnitude of the additional contribution depends on the stellar compactness, the equation of state, and the running term. Dynamical Love numbers are significantly enhanced with respect to their static counterparts for relatively small compactness. As a result, although they formally enter the gravitational-wave phase at eighth post-Newtonian order, dynamical tidal effects yield a nonnegligible contribution during the late inspiral. Using a Fisher-matrix analysis, we show that third-generation detectors such as the Einstein Telescope could measure dynamical Love numbers for a range of neutron-star masses and equations of state. Conversely, neglecting these effects can lead to significant biases in the inference of static Love numbers, and hence on the nuclear equation of state. Our results highlight the importance of dynamical tidal effects for high-precision gravitational-wave modeling with future detectors.

A bstract: Dynamical Love numbers capture the conservative response of an object to a time-dependent external tidal gravitational field. We compute the dynamical Love numbers of Schwarzschild black holes in general relativity within a point-particle effective field theory framework. In addition to the known logarithmic running, we compute the finite scheme-dependent contributions to the Love number couplings. We do this by matching the renormalized one-point function in the effective theory to the classical field profile computed in general relativity. On the general relativity side, we solve the Regge-Wheeler and Zerilli equations perturbatively in a small frequency expansion. In order to match on the effective field theory side we include gravitational interactions using the Born series and employ dimensional regularization to obtain a renormalized field profile.

A bstract: We investigate the nonlinear tidal response of relativistic neutron stars by computing the fully relativistic, static, quadratic Love numbers. Using both the worldline effective field theory for extended gravitating bodies and second-order perturbations of relativistic stellar models, we derive the nonlinear tidal deformation induced by an external gravito-electric tidal field to quadratic order. Through a suitable matching procedure, we provide for the first time the leading nonlinear tidal corrections to the conservative dynamics and gravitational-wave signal of binary systems. Quadratic Love numbers are enhanced more than the linear ones in the small-compactness limit. Because of this, despite entering the gravitational-wave phase at 8th post-Newtonian (PN) order, the leading quadratic Love number can be as important as the next-to-next-to-leading order linear tidal correction, which enters at 7th PN order, and is larger than the subleading point-particle contribution entering at 4th PN order. In particular, quadratic Love numbers can be as large as ~ 10% of the linear Love numbers in the late inspiral phase. Our approach provides a framework to also compute the (subleading) nonlinear effects induced by magnetic tidal fields and higher multipole moments, and sets the foundations for incorporating nonlinear tidal effects in high-precision gravitational-wave modeling.

A bstract: We study the scalar tidal responses of spinning higher-dimensional black holes, and their effective field theory description. After constructing the effective field theory of a spinning point particle in general dimension, we apply this theory to match the scalar responses of a variety of black hole solutions. In addition to the five-dimensional Myers-Perry black hole, we derive the scalar responses of spinning black holes in the large D limit, and also study the responses of black holes in the ultra-spinning regime. We find that in the most generic case, the static responses of higher-dimensional spinning black holes do not vanish, but for special cases we find a pattern of zeroes in the responses, similar to other known examples. Further, we observe various interesting relations between the responses.

The induced conservative tidal response of self-gravitating objects in general relativity is parametrized in terms of a set of coefficients, which are commonly referred to as Love numbers. For asymptotically-flat black holes in four spacetime dimensions, the Love numbers are famously zero in the static regime. In this work, we show that this result continues to hold upon inclusion of nonlinearities in the theory for Schwarzschild black holes. We first solve the quadratic Einstein equations in the static limit to all orders in the multipolar expansion, including both even and odd perturbations. We show that the second-order solutions take simple analytic expressions, generically expressible in the form of finite polynomials. We then define the quadratic Love numbers at the level of the point-particle effective field theory. By performing the matching with the full solution in general relativity, we show that quadratic Love number coefficients are zero to all orders in the derivative expansion, like the linear ones.

It is well known that asymptotically flat black holes in general relativity have vanishing tidal Love numbers. In the case of Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes, this property has been shown to be a consequence of a hidden structure of ladder symmetries for the perturbations. In this work, we extend the ladder symmetries to non-rotating charged black holes in general relativity. As opposed to previous works in this context, we adopt a more general definition of Love numbers, including quadratic operators that mix gravitational and electromagnetic perturbations in the point-particle effective field theory. We show that the calculation of a subset of those couplings in full general relativity is affected by an ambiguity in the split between source and response, which we resolve through an analytic continuation. As a result, we derive a novel master equation that unifies scalar, electromagnetic and gravitational perturbations around Reissner-Nordström black holes. The equation is hypergeometric and can be obtained from previous formulations via nontrivial field redefinitions, which allow to systematically remove some of the singularities and make the presence of the ladder symmetries more manifest.