Related papers: Sgr A* and General Relativity
Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at sub-millimeter waves has the potential to image the shadow of the black hole in the Galactic Center, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), and thereby test basic predictions of the theory of general…
The inferred black hole in the Galactic center spans the largest angle on the sky among all known black holes. Forthcoming observational programs plan to localize or potentially resolve the image of Sgr A* to an exquisite precision,…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, but there is not yet clear evidence that the geometry of the space-time around these objects is really described by the Kerr metric.…
The Galactic center provides a unique astrophysical laboratory for us to study various astrophysical processes. In this paper, we review and outline the latest results from observations of Sgr~A$^*$ in terms of source structure and…
We investigate the frame-dragging effect of the hairy Kerr spacetimes on the spin of a test gyro and accretion disk. Firstly, we analyze Lense-Thirring (LT) precession frequency, geodetic precession frequency, and the general spin…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicts that the spacetime metric around astrophysical black holes is described by the Kerr solution. In this work, we employ state-of-the-art in relativistic reflection modeling to analyze a…
Recent developments in the field of gravitational physics, including the emergence of gravitational wave astronomy, black hole images, and more accurate telescopes, have allowed us to probe the strong-field character of gravity in a novel…
The Galactic Center black hole environment gives us new opportunity to test deviation from General Relativity and black hole physics. In this work we analytically generate the shape of the Galactic Center black hole by using a recently…
A disformal Kerr black hole solution is a rotating black hole solution in a modified gravity theory which breaks the circular condition of spacetime differently from the case of the Kerr spacetime. In this paper, assuming that Sagittarius…
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…
General relativity has passed all solar system experiments and neutron star based tests, such as binary pulsar observations, with flying colors. A more exotic arena for testing general relativity is in systems that contain one or more black…
We study the ability of the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (aLIGO) to detect apparent violations of the cosmic censorship conjecture and the no-hair theorem. The cosmic censorship conjecture, which is believed…
The sensitivity of the SKA enables a number of tests of theories of gravity. A Galactic Census of pulsars will discover most of the active pulsars in the Galaxy beamed toward us. In this census will almost certainly be pulsar-black hole…
The gravitational field outside of astrophysical black holes is completely described by their mass and spin frequency, as expressed by the no-hair theorems. These theorems assume vacuum spacetimes, and thus they apply only to black holes…
Sagittarius A*, the supermassive compact object at the center of the Galaxy, exhibits outbursts in the near infrared and X-ray domains. These flares are likely due to energetic events very close to the central object, on a scale of a few…
Searching for violations of the no-hair theorem (NHT) is a powerful way to test gravity, and more generally fundamental physics, particularly with regards to the existence of additional scalar fields. The first observation of a black hole…
We analyze the post-Newtonian orbit of stars around a deformed Kerr black hole. The deformation we consider is a class of disformal transformations of a nontrivial Kerr solution in scalar-tensor theory which are labeled via the disformal…
This chapter provides a detailed overview of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, located in the dense Galactic Center region approximately 8 kpc from Earth. Despite its relatively low…
Astrophysical black holes (BHs) are universally expected to be described by the Kerr metric, a stationary, vacuum solution of general relativity (GR). Indeed, by imaging M87$^\star$ and Sgr A$^\star$ and measuring the size of their shadows,…
I try to describe the stepwise progress in proving that massive black holes do exist in the Universe. As compared to forty years ago, measurements have pushed the 'size' of the 4 million solar mass concentration in the Galactic Center…