Black Hole Shadow in Symmergent Gravity

Symmergent gravity is the $R+R^2$ gravity theory which emerges in a way restoring gauge symmetries broken explicitly by the ultraviolet cutoff in effective field theories. To test symmergent gravity we construct novel black hole solutions in four dimensions, and study their shadow in the vacuum as well as plasma medium. Our detailed analyses show that the horizon radius, Hawking temperature, Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, shadow angular radius, and photon deflection angle are sensitive probes of the symmergent gravity and particle spectrum of the underlying quantum field theory.