Related papers: Primary caustics and critical points behind a Kerr…
The properties of the relativistic rings which show up in images of a source when a black hole lies between the source and observer are examined. The impact parameters are calculated, along with the distances of closest approach of the rays…
The recent time witnessed a surge of interest in strong gravitational lensing by black holes is due to the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) results, which suggest comparing the black hole lensing in both general relativity and heterotic string…
We consider the perturbative, fully explicit, analytical behaviour of photon escape cones in the Kerr spacetime. When one conducts the fully general non-perturbative Kerr analysis, one quickly finds that one must at some point appeal to…
We have developed a methodology to test the age-old cosmic censorship hypothesis in Kerr geometry. We have shown that the Kerr black hole can be overspun by particles captured from the innermost stable circular orbit. However, it appears…
We prove the precise asymptotics of the spin $-2$ Teukolsky field in the interior and along the Cauchy horizon of a subextremal Kerr black hole. Together with the oscillatory blow-up asymptotics of the spin $+2$ Teukolsky field proven in…
Gravitational lensing by the dual cusp catastrophes of the cold dark matter (CDM) caustic rings at cosmological distances may provide the tantalizing opportunity to detect CDM indirectly, and discriminate between axions and weakly…
In this letter, we show that a massive black hole (MBH) which falls into the center of a galaxy in dynamical timescale leaves a weak cusp ($\rho \propto r^{-1/2}$) around it, which is in good agreement with the recent observations of…
It has recently been pointed out that arbitrary center-of-mass energies may be obtained for particle collisions near the horizon of an extremal Kerr black hole. We investigate this mechanism in cylindrical topology. In particular we…
Black holes are a common feature of the Universe. They are observed as stellar mass black holes spread throughout galaxies and as supermassive objects in their centres. Observations of stars orbiting close to the centre of our Galaxy…
The existence of stellar cusps in dense clusters around massive black holes is a fundamental, decades-old prediction of theoretical stellar dynamics. Yet, observational evidence has been difficult to obtain. With a new, improved analysis of…
In the neighborhood of Sgr A*, several stars (S2, S12, S14, S1, S8, S13) enjoy an accurate determination of their orbital parameters. General Relativity predicts that the central black hole acts as a gravitational lens on these stars,…
Recent quasar microlensing observations have constrained the sizes of X-ray emission regions to be within about 10 gravitational radii of the central supermassive black hole. Therefore, the X-ray emission from lensed quasars is first…
The existence of a massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way, coinciding with the radio source Sgr A*, is being established on more and more solid ground. In principle, this black hole, acting as a gravitational lens, is able to…
The differential cross section for scattering of a Dirac particle in a black hole background is found. The result is the gravitational analog of the Mott formula for scattering in a Coulomb background. The equivalence principle is neatly…
In this work we study gravitational lensing of neutrinos by Schwarzschild black holes. In particular, we analyze the case of a neutrino transient source associated with a gamma-ray burst lensed by a supermassive black hole located at the…
We present optical and X-ray data for the first object showing strong evidence for being a black hole in a globular cluster. We show the initial X-ray light curve and X-ray spectrum which led to the discovery that this is an extremely…
Clumps of material orbiting a black hole may be disturbed, somewhat like comets in the Kuiper belt, to relatively small periastron orbits. Each periastron passage changes the orbital parameters in such a way that the orbit becomes more and…
It is now widely accepted that the universe as we understand it is accelerating in expansion and fits the de Sitter model rather well. As such, a realistic assumption of black holes must place them on a de Sitter background and not…
The event horizon of a black hole is arguably the most dramatic manifestation of the fact that in General Relativity, causal structure is dynamical and spacetimes can be separated into distinct regions by causal boundaries. Causal set…
The formation of a cusp on a black hole shadow is a striking signature of physics beyond the Kerr paradigm. We demonstrate that this morphological change fundamentally alters the shadow's topology with the topological charge flipping from 1…