Related papers: OJ 287: New Testing Ground for General Relativity …
Tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity have mostly been carried out in weak gravitational fields where the space-time curvature effects are first-order deviations from Newton's theory. Binary pulsars provide a means of probing the…
The blazar OJ287 is the most promising (and the only) case for an extragalactic binary black hole system inspiralling under the action of gravitational radiation reaction. At present, though it is not possible to directly observe the binary…
OJ 287 is a blazar thought to be a binary system containing a ~ 18 billion solar mass primary black hole accompanied by a ~ 150 million solar mass secondary black hole in an eccentric orbit, which triggers electromagnetic flares twice in…
Binary pulsars allow us to carry out precision tests of gravity and have placed stringent bounds on a broad class of theories beyond general relativity. Current and future radio telescopes, such as FAST, SKA, and MeerKAT, may find a new…
General relativity has passed all solar system experiments and neutron star based tests, such as binary pulsar observations, with flying colors. A more exotic arena for testing general relativity is in systems that contain one or more black…
The recent LIGO detection of gravitational waves from black-hole binaries offers the exciting possibility of testing gravitational theories in the previously inaccessible strong-field, highly relativistic regime. While the LIGO detections…
We compute the gravitational radiation of the supermassive binary black hole OJ287. By fitting the data of its recent seven outbursts, we obtain the orbital motion up to 3.5PN (Post-Newtonian) order, the energy and angular momentum fluxes…
The light curve of the quasar OJ 287 extends from 1891 up today without major gaps. Here we summarize the results of the 2005 - 2010 observing campaign. The main results are the following: (1) The 2005 October optical outburst came at the…
The orbital period loss of the compact binary systems is the first indirect evidence of gravitational waves which agrees well with Einstein's general theory of relativity to a very good accuracy. However, there is less than one percent…
OJ 287 is the best-known supermassive black hole binary candidate in the nanohertz gravitational wave band. It exhibits periodic flares every $\sim$ 12 years, likely caused by collisions of a smaller-mass secondary with the accretion disk…
One century after its formulation, Einstein's general relativity has made remarkable predictions and turned out to be compatible with all experimental tests. Most of these tests probe the theory in the weak-field regime, and there are…
We review the general relativistic theory of the motion, and of the timing, of binary systems containing compact objects (neutron stars or black holes). Then we indicate the various ways one can use binary pulsar data to test the…
We computed the orbital evolution and the emitted gravitational radiation of the supermassive black hole binary OJ 287. Here we used the initial data provided by the outburst structure of the system. We considered the spin-spin, spin-orbit,…
Starting with the conceptual foundation of general relativity (GR) - equivalence principle, space-time geometry and special relativity, I train cross hairs on two characteristic predictions of GR - black holes and gravitational waves. These…
Supermassive black holes are common in centers of galaxies. Among the active galaxies, quasars are the most extreme, and their black hole masses range as high as to $6\cdot 10^{10} M_\odot$. Binary black holes are of special interest but so…
Within Einstein's theory of gravity, any compact object heavier than a few solar masses must be a black hole. Any observation showing otherwise would imply either new physics beyond General Relativity or new exotic matter fields beyond the…
General Relativity (GR) remains the most accurate theory of gravity to date. It has passed many experimental tests in the Solar System as well as binary pulsar, cosmological and gravitational-wave (GW) observations. Some of these tests…
Precision tests of general relativity can be conducted by observing binary pulsars. Theories with massive fields exist to explain a variety of phenomena from dark energy to the strong CP problem. Existing pulsar binaries, such as the white…
We review the experimental evidence for Einstein's special and general relativity. A variety of high precision null experiments verify the weak equivalence principle and local Lorentz invariance, while gravitational redshift and other clock…
The highly variable blazar OJ~287 is commonly discussed as an example of a binary black hole system. The 130 year long optical light curve is well explained by a model where the central body is a massive black hole of 18.35$\times$10$^9$…