English

Determining parameters of Kerr black holes at finite distance by shadow observation

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2024-02-20 v2 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

We propose a new method to determine the physical parameters of Kerr black holes (namely, specific angular momentum aa, inclination angle ii, and distance DD from an observer) only from the shadow's information such as the size and shape. Key points in our method are (i) to treat the distance as a free parameter, (ii) to expand the shadow's outline as a Fourier series, and (iii) to construct principal components from the Fourier coefficients. These points enable us to obtain a one-to-one mapping between three principal components, being observables characterizing the size and deviation of shadow's shape from a circular disk, and the values of three parameters (D/M,a/M,iD/M, a/M, i), where MM is the mass of black hole. Our method is applicable to various type of black holes and even to ones with accretion disks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2311.16802,
  title  = {Determining parameters of Kerr black holes at finite distance by shadow observation},
  author = {Kenta Hioki and Umpei Miyamoto},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.16802},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

28 pages, 6 figures, sec 5 added, accepted for publication in Physical Review D; Supplemental material is attached. To view the attachment, please download and extract the gzipped tar source file listed under "Other formats''