Related papers: Evolution of the spin parameter of accreting compa…
Nowadays we believe that a typical galaxy contains about $10^7$ stellar-mass black holes and a single super-massive black hole at its center. According to general relativity, these objects are characterized solely by their mass $M$ and by…
If astrophysical black hole candidates are the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, the value of their spin parameter must be subject to the theoretical bound $|a_*| \le 1$. In this work, we consider the possibility that these…
In 4-dimensional General Relativity, black holes are described by the Kerr solution and are completely specified by their mass $M$ and by their spin angular momentum $J$. A fundamental limit for a black hole in General Relativity is the…
Black holes described by the Kerr metric can have a theoretical maximum dimensionless spin parameter of $a_\bullet = 1$, but several effects may limit the maximum spin parameter in astrophysical systems. We perform general relativistic…
We present the results of three-dimensional general relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of adiabatic and spherically symmetric accretion in Kerr space-time. We consider compact objects with spin parameter $|a_*| \le 1$ (black holes) and…
In 4-dimensional General Relativity, black holes are described by the Kerr solution and are subject to the bound $|a_*| \le 1$, where $a_*$ is the black hole spin parameter. If current black hole candidates are not the black holes predicted…
The accretion process onto spinning objects in Kerr spacetimes is studied with numerical simulations. Our results show that accretion onto compact objects with Kerr parameter (characterizing the spin) $|a| < M$ and $|a| > M$ is very…
Fitting the thermal continuum emission of accreting black holes observed across X-ray bands represents one of the principle means of constraining the properties (mass and spin) of astrophysical black holes. Recent ''continuum fitting''…
We propose a new radial coordinate to write the Kerr metric in puncture form. Unlike the quasi-radial coordinate introduced previously, the horizon radius remains finite in our radial coordinate in the extreme Kerr limit a/M -> 1. This…
A Kerr black hole with mass $M$ and angular momentum $J$ satisfies the extremality inequality $|J| \le M^2$. In the presence of matter and/or gravitational radiation, this bound needs to be reformulated in terms of local measurements of the…
The specific angular momentum of a Kerr black hole must not be larger than its mass. The observational confirmation of this bound which we call a Kerr bound directly suggests the existence of a black hole. In order to investigate…
Near extremal Kerr black holes are subject to the Thorne limit $a<a^*_{\rm lim}=0.998$ in the case of thin disc accretion, or some generalized version of this in other disc geometries. However any limit that differs from the thermodynamics…
We consider a subset of the physical processes that determine the spin j = a/M of astrophysical black holes. These include: (1) Initial conditions. Recent models suggest that the collapse of supermassive stars are likely to produce black…
We study the accretion process in the thin disk around a rotating non-Kerr black hole with a deformed parameter and an unbound rotation parameter. Our results show that the presence of the deformed parameter $\epsilon$ modifies the standard…
Supermassive black holes at the centre of galactic nuclei mostly grow in mass through gas accretion over cosmic time. This process also modifies the angular momentum (or spin) of black holes, both in magnitude and in orientation. Despite…
In 4-dimensional General Relativity, there are several theorems restricting the topology of the event horizon of a black hole. In the stationary case, black holes must have a spherical horizon, while a toroidal spatial topology is allowed…
Based on a spectral analysis of the X-ray continuum that employs a fully relativistic accretion-disk model, we conclude that the compact primary of the binary X-ray source GRS 1915+105 is a rapidly-rotating Kerr black hole. We find a lower…
Recently, two of us have argued that non-Kerr black holes in gravity theories different from General Relativity may have a topologically non-trivial event horizon. More precisely, the spatial topology of the horizon of non-rotating and…
Black holes are spun up by accreting matter and possibly spun-down by magnetic fields. In our work we consider the effect on black hole rotation of the two electromagnetic processes, Blandford-Znajek and Direct Magnetic Link, that differ in…
Rotating black holes without equatorial reflection symmetry can naturally arise in effective low-energy theories of fundamental quantum gravity, in particular, when parity-violating interactions are introduced. Adopting a theory-agnostic…