Related papers: Observations of General Relativity at strong and w…
The Kerr spacetime of spinning black holes is one of the most intriguing predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity. The special role this spacetime plays in the theory of gravity is encapsulated in the no-hair theorem, which…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity was proposed over 100 years ago and has successfully passed a large number of observational tests in weak gravitational fields. On the contrary, the strong field regime is still largely unexplored.…
General relativity has been tested by many experiments, which, however, almost exclusively probe weak spacetime curvatures. In this thesis, I create two frameworks for testing general relativity in the strong-field regime with observations…
Black holes in General Relativity are very simple objects. This property, that goes under the name of "no-hair," has been refined in the last few decades and admits several versions. The simplicity of black holes makes them ideal testbeds…
The theory of General Relativity has successfully passed a large number of observational tests without requiring any adjustment from its original version proposed by Einstein in 1915. The past 8 years have seen significant advancements in…
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…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity is one of the pillars of modern physics. For decades, the theory has been mainly tested in the weak field regime with experiments in the Solar System and observations of binary pulsars. Thanks to a…
If a class of stars orbits the central black hole in our galaxy in short period (~ 0.1 year), high eccentricity (~ 0.9) orbits, they will experience precessions of their orbital planes induced by both relativistic frame-dragging and the…
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…
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…
Although General Relativity (GR) has been tested extensively in the weak gravity regime, similar tests in the strong gravity regime are still missing. In this paper we explore the possibility to use X-ray spectropolarimetric observations of…
The most simple observed cases of gravitational lensing of distant quasars and galaxies by galaxies and clusters of galaxies are used to test Einstein's theory of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravity over galactic and intergalactic…
Up to now, Einstein's general theory of relativity has passed all experimental tests. But yet we know that it is not a fundamental theory and that it is incompatible with quantum theory. While several extended and improved gravitational…
Einstein's theory of general relativity was proposed over 100 years ago and has successfully passed a large number of observational tests in the weak field regime. However, the strong field regime is largely unexplored, and there are many…
In the realm of spacetimes governed by Einstein's general relativity and containing only Maxwell's electromagnetic field, stationary black holes are fully characterized by their mass, electric or magnetic charge, and angular momentum -- a…
The recent detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO/VIRGO collaboration has allowed for the first tests of Einstein's theory in the extreme gravity regime, where the gravitational interaction is simultaneously strong, non-linear and…
General Relativity allows for a unique black hole solution, characterized by its mass M, angular momentum J, and electric charge Q. Black holes in General Relativity are thus said to have no hair, that is, no other independent physical…
The simplicity of black holes, as characterized by no-hair theorems, is one of the most important mathematical results in the framework of general relativity. Are these theorems unique to black hole spacetimes, or do they also constrain the…
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 no-hair theorem characterizes the fundamental nature of black holes in general relativity. This theorem can be tested observationally by measuring the mass and spin of a black hole as well as its quadrupole moment, which may deviate…