Testing gravity with black hole shadow subrings

DOI10.1088/1361-6382/AC655DzbMATH Open1496.83022arXiv2202.02355OpenAlexW4224213229MaRDI QIDQ5077293FDOQ5077293

Authors: Dimitry Ayzenberg 

Publication date: 18 May 2022

Published in: Classical and Quantum Gravity (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The black hole shadow, first observed by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017, is the newest method for studying black holes and understanding gravity. Much work has gone into understanding the shadow of a Kerr black hole, including all of the complex astrophysics of the accretion disk, and there are numerous studies of the ideal shadow in non-Kerr black holes and exotic compact objects. This paper presents one of the first studies of the black hole shadow of non-Kerr black holes when the illumination source is an accretion disk. In particular, the ability of current and future very long baseline interformeters to estimate the physical parameters of the black hole spacetime and accretion disk is investigated using two different parametrized black hole metrics that encode a number of possible deviations from Kerr. Both the full shadow image and the individual subrings of the shadow are analyzed as the higher order subrings are weakly dependent on the disk physics and may be a more viable observable for studying the spacetime. The results suggest that with current telescope capabilities and any future earth-based telescopes it will be quite difficult to place strong constraints on departures from the Kerr spacetime, primarily due to the low resolution and strong degeneracies between the spacetime parameters. More optimistically, space-based interferometers may be capable of testing the Kerr nature of black holes and general relativity to comparable or better precision than is currently possible with other observations.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.02355

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zbMATH Keywords

general relativitytests of gravityblack hole shadow

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Black holes (83C57) Observational and experimental questions in relativity and gravitational theory (83B05) Galactic and stellar structure (85A15)

Cites Work

• A Relativist's Toolkit
• Relativistic binaries in globular clusters
• Kerr black holes are not unique to general relativity
• Spacetime completeness of non-singular black holes in conformal gravity
• Lorentzian causality theory
• Shadows of Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet black holes
• Observing the shadows of stellar-mass black holes with binary companions
• Black hole shadow as a test of general relativity: quadratic gravity

Cited In (7)

• Observing the shadow of modified gravity black hole
• Analytical perturbations of relativistic images in Kerr space-time
• A novel test of gravity via black hole eikonal correspondence
• Universal signatures of singularity-resolving physics in photon rings of black holes and horizonless objects
• Shadows and photon rings of regular black holes and geonic horizonless compact objects
• Black Holes: A Laboratory for Testing Strong Gravity
• Parameterizations of black-hole spacetimes beyond circularity

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