Related papers: Critical Emission from a High-Spin Black Hole
Most of the X-ray emission from luminous accreting black holes emerges from within 20 gravitational radii. The effective emission radius is several times smaller if the black hole is rapidly spinning. General Relativistic effects can then…
The spin measurement of black holes has important implications in physics and astrophysics. Regardless of the specific technique to estimate the black hole spin, all the current approaches assume that the space-time geometry around the…
Particle scattering and radiation by a magnetically charged, dilatonic black hole is investigated near the extremal limit at which the mass is a constant times the charge. Near this limit a neighborhood of the horizon of the black hole is…
We present the results of a new series of global 3D relativistic magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of thin accretion disks around spinning black holes. The disks have aspect ratios of $H/R\sim 0.05$ and spin parameters $a/M=0, 0.5,…
Emission from within the plunging region of black hole accretion flows has recently been detected in two X-ray binary systems. There is, furthermore, a possible discrepancy between the inferred spins of gravitational wave and…
The Kerr spacetime is symmetric with respect to a well-defined equatorial plane. When testing the equatorial reflection symmetry of an isolated black hole, one is at the same time testing the Kerr hypothesis in General Relativity. In this…
The presence of a bright "photon ring" surrounding a dark "black hole shadow" has been discussed as an important feature of the observational appearance of emission originating near a black hole. We clarify the meaning and relevance of…
Spectral features can arise by reflection of coronal X-rays on a black hole accretion disc. The resulting profile bears various imprints of strong gravitational field acting on the light emitting gas. The observed shape of the reflection…
Accretion disk reflection spectra, including broad iron emission lines, bear the imprints of the strong Doppler shifts and gravitational red-shifts close to black holes. The extremity of these shifts depends on the proximity of the…
Combined influence of rotation of a black hole and ambient magnetic fields creates conditions for powerful astrophysical processes of accretion and outflow of matter which are observed in many systems across the range of masses; from…
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 region of spacetime near the event horizon of a black hole can be viewed as a deep potential well at large gravitational redshift relative to distant observers. However, matter orbiting in this region travels at relativistic speeds and…
Since a black hole does not emit light from its interior, nor does it have a surface on which light from nearby sources can be reflected, observational study of black hole physics requires observing the gravitational impact of the black…
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…
We present the first fully relativistic prediction of the electromagnetic emission from the surrounding gas of a supermassive binary black hole system approaching merger. Using a ray-tracing code to post-process data from a general…
Motivated by the fact that the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy, we consider rotating black holes surrounded by perfect fluid dark matter and study the accretion process in thin disk around such black holes. Here, we are…
We discuss the conditions under which plane electromagnetic and gravitational waves can be amplified by a rotating black hole due to superradiant scattering. We show, in particular, that amplification can occur for low-frequency waves with…
We have embarked in an HST program to determine the masses of black holes in spiral galaxies directly by measuring the line emission arising from an extended accretion disk. For each of the galaxies in our sample we have measured the…
If astrophysical black hole candidates are the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, the value of their spin parameter must be subject to the theoretical bound $|a_*| \le 1$. In this work, we consider the possibility that these…
Some ultraluminous X-ray sources in nearby galaxies show soft components resembling thermal disc emission. Calculations based on blackbody emission then indicate that the accreting black holes at the centres of these discs have masses of…