Related papers: Testing Properties of the Galactic Center Black Ho…
We discuss experiments achievable via monitoring of stellar dynamics near the massive black hole at the Galactic center with a next generation, extremely large telescope (ELT). Given the likely observational capabilities of an ELT and…
The S-stars discovered in the Galactic center (GC) are expected to provide unique dynamical tests of the Kerr metric of the massive black hole (MBH) orbited by them. In order to obtain unbiased measurements of its spin and the related…
The S-star cluster in the Galactic center allows us to study the physics close to a supermassive black hole, including distinctive dynamical tests of general relativity. Our best estimates for the mass of and the distance to Sgr A* using…
According to the no-hair theorem, an astrophysical black hole is uniquely described by only two quantities, the mass and the spin. In this series of papers, we investigate a framework for testing the no-hair theorem with observations of…
Observations of the S-stars, the cluster of young stars in the inner 0.1 pc of the Galactic Center, have been crucial in providing conclusive evidence for a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Since some of the stars have…
The black hole in the center of the Milky Way, Sgr A*, has the largest mass-to-distance ratio among all known black holes in the Universe. This property makes Sgr A* the optimal target for testing the gravitational no-hair theorem. In the…
The Galactic center offers us a unique opportunity to test General Relativity (GR) with the orbits of stars around a supermassive black hole. Observations of these stars have been one of the great successes of adaptive optics on 8-10 m…
Motion of short-period stars orbiting the supermassive black hole in our Galactic Center has been monitored for more than 20 years. These observations are currently offering a new way to test the gravitational theory in an unexplored…
Submilliarcsecond astrometry and imaging of the black hole Sgr A* at the Galactic Center may become possible in the near future at infrared and submillimetre wavelengths. This resolution is sufficient to observe the silhouette the…
Empirically determining the averaged variations of the orbital parameters of the stars orbiting the Supermassive Black Hole (SBH) hosted by the Galactic Centre (GC) in Sgr A* is, in principle, a valuable tool to put on the test the General…
Despite its success in the weak gravity regime, General Relativity (GR) has yet to be verified in the regime of strong gravity. In this paper, we present the results of detailed ray tracing simulations aiming at clarifying if the combined…
Pulsars around the Massive Black Hole (MBH) in the Galactic Center (GC) are expected to be revealed by the incoming facilities (e.g., the Square Kilometre Array). Under a full relativistic framework with the pulsar approximated as a test…
Perturbed Kerr black holes emit gravitational radiation, which (for the practical purposes of gravitational-wave astronomy) consists of a superposition of damped sinusoids termed quasi-normal modes. The frequencies and time-constants of the…
General relativity has been widely tested in weak gravitational fields but still stands largely untested in the strong-field regime. According to the no-hair theorem, black holes in general relativity depend only on their masses and spins…
I report the discovery of a new effect of General Relativity which is important to understand very rapidly rotating (Kerr) black holes. The orbital velocity of a test particle is no longer a monotonic function of the orbit radius when the…
One avenue for testing the no-hair theorem is obtained through timing a pulsar orbiting close to a black hole and fitting for quadrupolar effects on the time-of-arrival of pulses. If deviations from the Kerr quadrupole are measured, then…
According to the no-hair theorem, astrophysical black holes are uniquely described by their mass and spin. In this paper, we review a new framework for testing the no-hair hypothesis with observations in the electromagnetic spectrum. The…
Stars closely approaching the massive black hole in the center of the Galaxy provide a unique opportunity to probe post-Newtonian physics in a yet unexplored regime of celestial mechanics. Recent advances in infrared stellar spectroscopy…
The discovery and timing of radio pulsars within the Galactic centre is a fundamental aspect of the SKA Science Case, responding to the topic of "Strong Field Tests of Gravity with Pulsars and Black Holes" (Kramer et al. 2004; Cordes et al.…
The measurement of relativistic effects around the galactic center may allow in the near future to strongly constrain the parameters of the supermassive black hole likely present at the galactic center (Sgr A*). As a by-product of these…