Related papers: K$\alpha$ iron line profile from accretion disks a…
The relativistically broad X-ray iron line seen in many AGN spectra is thought to originate from the central regions of the putative black hole accretion disk. Both the line profile and strength will vary in response to rapid variability of…
Recently, a rotating black hole solution was found in Vector-Tensor Galileons modified gravity that has some significant differences from the Kerr black hole solution. We study the iron line shape that is part of the reflection spectrum of…
We present the results of our studies on accretion disks in the proximity of astrophysical black holes. These disks can be of varying degrees of opacity, geometrical shapes, sizes, and volumes. The central compact object is a Schwarzschild…
The metal abundances in galactic nuclei carry key information on the history of star formation and mass transfer in central regions of galaxies. X-ray fluorescence analysis is a unique tool to reliably measure the abundances of various…
Petrucci et al. (2002; hereafter P02) have reported extraordinary behaviour of the iron K alpha line in the type 1 AGN Mrk 841. At the XMM-Newton/EPIC resolution, a narrow line was observed in a short observation, which then apparently…
Einstein's theory of general relativity has been extensively tested in weak gravitational fields, mainly with experiments in the Solar System and observations of radio pulsars, and current data agree well with the theoretical predictions.…
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…
As a consequence of Birkhoff's theorem, the exterior gravitational field of a spherically symmetric star or black hole is always given by the Schwarzschild metric. In contrast, the exterior gravitational field of a rotating (axisymmetric)…
It is thought that the spacetime metric around astrophysical black holes is well described by the Kerr solution of Einstein's gravity. However, a robust observational evidence of the Kerr nature of these objects is still lacking. Here we…
One of the most promising methods to measure the spin of an accreting black hole is fitting the broad iron K$\alpha$ line in the X-ray spectrum. The line profile also depends on the geometry of the hard X-ray emitting corona. To put…
X-ray reflection spectroscopy can be a powerful tool to test the nature of astrophysical black holes. Extending previous work on Kerr black holes with scalar hair [1] and on boson stars [2], here we study whether astrophysical black hole…
Black holes in General Relativity are known as Kerr black holes and are characterized solely by two parameters, the mass $M$ and the spin $J$. All the higher multipole moments of the gravitational field are functions of these two…
One of the methods of study of black holes in astrophysics is based on broadening of the spectrum of radiation of ionized Iron atoms. The line K$\alpha$ associated with Iron emission at 6.4 keV is very narrow. If such an ion is revolving…
The Fe K_\alpha fluorescent line at 6.4 keV is a powerful probe of the space-time metric in the vicinity of accreting compact objects. We investigated here how some alternative theories of gravity, namely Scalar tensor Theories, that invoke…
Recently, two of us have found numerically rotating Ellis wormholes as solutions of 4-dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to a phantom field. In this paper, we investigate possible observational signatures to identify similar objects in…
We describe a new numerical algorithm for ray tracing in the external spacetimes of spinning compact objects characterized by arbitrary quadrupole moments. Such spacetimes describe non-Kerr vacuum solutions that can be used to test the…
All black holes (BHs) in nature are expected to be described by the Kerr vacuum solution of general relativity (GR). However, the Kerr BH interior contains several problematic features such as a Cauchy horizon, a curvature singularity, and…
In this paper, we investigate the strong gravitational lensing effects and optical appearances around a spherically symmetric regular black hole, whose metric is derived from a non-singular collapsing dust ball model in asymptotically safe…
In a previous paper, one of us has described a code to compute the thermal spectrum of geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disks around generic stationary and axisymmetric black holes, which are not necessarily of the Kerr…
There is growing evidence from both spectral and timing properties that there is a truncated inner accretion disc in low mass accretion rate Galactic black hole systems. The detection of extremely smeared relativistic iron lines in some of…