Related papers: Testing black hole candidates with electromagnetic…
Collapsed objects have definitely been observed: some are stellar-mass objects, the endpoint of massive stars; others, millions of times more massive, have been discovered in the cores of most galaxies. Their formation poses some…
Gravitational lensing near a black hole is strong enough that light rays can circle the event horizon multiple times. Photons emitted in multiple directions at a single event, perhaps because of localized, impulsive heating of accreting…
Some of the theoretical challenges posed by the general relativistic description of binary systems of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes) are reviewed. We recall the various ways one can use the theory of the motion, and of the…
Usually alternative theories of gravity imply deviations from the well-known Kerr space-time, a model of an isolated black hole in General Relativity. In the dominant order, the deformed Kerr metric, free of closed time-like curves outside…
The construction of a generic parametrization to describe the spacetime geometry around astrophysical black hole candidates is an important step to test the Kerr black hole hypothesis. In the last few years, the Johannsen-Psaltis metric has…
Under the assumption that astrophysical black hole candidates are the Kerr black holes of general relativity, the continuum-fitting method and the analysis of the K$\alpha$ iron line are today the only available techniques capable 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 radio observations of binary pulsars. Until 2015, the strong field…
The unprecedented image of the M87* supermassive black hole has sparked some controversy over its usefulness as a test of the general relativistic Kerr metric. The criticism is mainly related to the black hole's quasi-circular shadow and…
In a recent paper [Ghasemi-Nodehi & Bambi, EPJC 76 (2016) 290], we have proposed a new parametrization for testing the Kerr nature of astrophysical black hole candidates. In the present work, we study the possibility of constraining the…
We estimate the potential of present and future interferometric gravitational-wave detectors to test the Kerr nature of black holes through "gravitational spectroscopy," i.e. the measurement of multiple quasinormal mode frequencies from the…
Black holes are by definition black, and therefore cannot be directly observed by using electromagnetic radiations. Convincing identification of black holes must necessarily depend on the identification of a very specially behaving matter…
The theory of General Relativity has successfully passed a large number of observational tests. The theory has been extensively tested in the weak-field regime with experiments in the Solar System and observations of binary pulsars. The…
Future electromagnetic observations of black holes may allow us to test General Relativity in the strong-field regime. Such tests, however, require knowledge of rotating black hole solutions in modified gravity theories, a class of which…
The X-ray emission of neutron stars and black holes presents a rich phenomenology that can lead us to a better understanding of their nature and to address more general physics questions: Does general relativity apply in the strong gravity…
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…
The iron K$\alpha$ line commonly observed in the X-ray spectrum of both stellar-mass and supermassive black hole candidates originates from X-ray fluorescence of the inner accretion disk. Accordingly, it can be used to map the spacetime…
Recently, Cardoso et al. [arXiv:2109.00005] found an exact solution describing the black hole immersed in a galactic-like distribution of matter. There, the properties of gravitational radiation were studied. Here we continue analysis of…
Recently, we showed that the possibility of an interstellar mission to the closest black hole, while highly speculative and extremely challenging, is not completely unrealistic within the next few decades. Since such a mission might last…
X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a powerful tool for testing the Kerr hypothesis and probing the strong gravity regime around accreting black holes. Most tests of General Relativity (GR) assume that the spacetime around a black hole is…
We describe the possible forms of black hole images, viewed by a distant observer. These images are numerically calculated basing on general relativity and equations of motion in the Kerr-Newman metric. Black hole image is a gravitationally…