Related papers: Fundamental Concepts
Recent developments have ushered in a new era in the field of black hole astrophysics, providing our first direct view of the remarkable environment near black hole event horizons. These observations have enabled astronomers to confirm…
Black holes represent outstanding astrophysical laboratories to test the strong gravity regime, since alternative theories of gravity may predict black hole solutions whose may differ distinctly from those of General Relativity. When higher…
Black holes monopolize nowadays the center stage of fundamental physics. Yet, they are poorly understood objects. Notwithstanding, from their generic properties, one can infer important clues to what a fundamental theory, a theory that…
This work is devoted to investigate some consequences of black holes physics beyond the domain of general relativity, mainly in effective extra dimensional models. The investigation is carried along three gravitational effects, namely the…
In this chapter I focus on asking and answering the following questions: (1) What is a black hole? Answer: There are three types of black holes, namely mathematical black holes, physical black holes and astrophysical black holes. An…
The general parametrization of a black-hole spacetime in arbitrary metric theories of gravity includes an infinite set of parameters. It is natural to suppose that essential astrophysically observable quantities, such as quasinormal modes,…
Following the 2019 release by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration of the first pictures of a supermassive black hole, there has been an explosion of interest in black hole images, their theoretical interpretation, and their potential…
We review the properties and behavior X-ray binaries that contain an accreting black hole. The larger majority of such systems are X-ray transients, and many of them were observed in daily pointings with RXTE throughout the course of their…
Non-perturbative quantum general relativity provides a possible framework to analyze issues related to black hole thermodynamics from a fundamental perspective. A pedagogical account of the recent developments in this area is given. The…
This paper summarises our current understanding of the spectral continuum components observed in black hole X-ray binaries. The consequences for theoretical models are discussed with an emphasis on the constraints set by observations on the…
The article summarizes the observational evidence for the existence of massive black holes, as well as the current knowledge about their abundance, their mass and spin distributions, and their cosmic evolution within and together with their…
An original way of presentation of the Schwarzschild black hole in the form of a point-like mass with making the use of the Dirac $\delta$-function, including a description of a continuous collapse to such a point mass, is given. A…
Black holes are the elementary particles of gravity, the final state of sufficiently massive stars and of energetic collisions. With a forty-year long history, black hole physics is a fully-blossomed field which promises to embrace several…
Black and white holes play remarkably contrasting roles in general relativity versus observational astrophysics. While there is overwhelming observational evidence for the existence of compact objects that are "cold, dark, and heavy", which…
Black holes are real astrophysical objects, but their interiors are hidden and can only be "observed" through mathematics. The structure of rotating black holes is typically illustrated with the help of special coordinates. But any such…
The subject of this work is the formation of black holes in pure general relativity, by the focusing of incoming gravitational waves. The theorems established in this monograph constitute the first foray into the long time dynamics of…
A hot phase of the interstellar medium has now been detected and studied in several objects through its X-ray emission. A proper assessment of its characteristics is relevant for our understanding of several aspects of galaxy properties,…
Relativistic reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of accreting black holes. In the presence of high quality data and with the correct astrophysical model, X-ray reflection spectroscopy can be quite a powerful tool…
Next-generation observations will revolutionize our understanding of binary black holes and will detect new sources, such as intermediate-mass black holes. Primary science goals include: Discover binary black holes throughout the observable…
Over the last decades X-ray spectroscopy has proven to be a powerful tool for the estimation of black hole spin and several other key parameters in dozens of AGN and black hole X-ray binaries. In this White Paper, we discuss the…