Related papers: Exotic Compact Objects and How to Quench their Erg…
In a previous paper, we developed tools for studying the horizon geometry of a Kerr black hole that is tidally distorted by a binary companion using techniques that require large mass ratios but can be applied to any bound orbit and allow…
We consider a very simple model for gravitational wave echoes from black hole merger ringdowns which may arise from local Lorentz symmetry violations that modify graviton dispersion relations. If the corrections are sufficiently soft so…
Gravitational waves (GWs) from presumed binary black hole mergers are now being detected on a regular basis with the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo interferometers. Exotic compact objects (ECOs) have been proposed that differ from Kerr…
Gravitational wave astronomy provides an unprecedented opportunity to test the nature of black holes and search for exotic, compact alternatives. Recent studies have shown that exotic compact objects (ECOs) can ring down in a manner similar…
It is well known that a hypothetical compact object that looks like an Einsteinian (Schwarzschild or Kerr) black hole everywhere except a small region near its surface should have the ringdown profile predicted by the Einstein theory at…
Four-dimensional, asymptotically flat spacetimes with an ergoregion but no horizon have been shown to be linearly unstable against a superradiant-triggered mechanism. This result has wide implications in the search for astrophysically…
Black-hole spectroscopy is a powerful tool to probe the Kerr nature of astrophysical compact objects and their environment. The observation of multiple ringdown modes in gravitational waveforms could soon lead to high-precision…
We investigate thick accretion structures around Kerr black holes in a swirling background. This stationary and axisymmetric spacetime is composed of a rotating black hole, which is immersed in a rotating background. The swirling background…
The images of supermassive black holes surrounded by optically-thin, radiatively-inefficient accretion flows, like those observed with the Event Horizon Telescope, are characterized by a bright ring of emission surrounding the black-hole…
The Kerr geometry admits the Carter symmetry, which ensures that the geodesic equations are integrable. It is shown that gravitational waveforms associated with extreme-mass-ratio inspirals involving a non-integrable compact object display…
Relativistic ultracompact objects without an event horizon may be able to form in nature and merge as binary systems, mimicking the coalescence of ordinary black holes. The postmerger phase of such processes presents characteristic…
Some exotic compact objects possess evanescent ergosurfaces: timelike submanifolds on which a Killing vector field, which is timelike everywhere else, becomes null. We show that any manifold possessing an evanescent ergosurface but no event…
The ongoing observations of merging black holes by the instruments of the fledging gravitational wave astronomy has opened the way for testing the general relativistic Kerr black hole metric and, at the same time, for probing the existence…
Aretakis has proved the existence of an instability of a massless scalar field at the horizon of an extreme Kerr or Reissner-Nordstrom black hole: for generic initial data, a transverse derivative of the scalar field at the horizon does not…
Massive objects orbiting a near-extreme Kerr black hole quickly plunge into the horizon after passing the innermost stable circular orbit. The plunge trajectory is shown to be related by a conformal map to a circular orbit. Conformal…
Superspinars are ultracompact objects whose mass M and angular momentum J violate the Kerr bound (cJ/GM^2>1). Recent studies analyzed the observable consequences of gravitational lensing and accretion around superspinars in astrophysical…
Gravitational waves from the explosive merger of distant black holes are encoded with details regarding the complex extreme-gravity spacetime present at their source. Famously described by the Kerr spacetime metric for rotating black holes…
We analyze a rotating regular black hole spacetime with an asymptotically Minkowski core, focusing on extreme mass-ratio inspiral (EMRIs) where a stellar-mass object inspirals a supermassive black hole under consideration. Such spacetimes…
Future gravitational wave observatories open a unique avenue to study the environments surrounding black holes. Intermediate or extreme mass ratio inspirals will spend thousands to millions of cycles in the sensitivity range of detectors,…
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…