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Extreme-mass-ratio-inspiral observations from future space-based gravitational-wave detectors such as LISA will enable strong-field tests of general relativity with unprecedented precision, but at prohibitive computational cost if existing…
We address the question of how to build a class of $f(R)$ extensions of General Relativity which are compatible with solar system experiments, without making any preliminary assumption on the properties of $f$. The aim is reached by…
Einstein's theory of General Relativity was proposed over 100 years ago and has successfully passed a large number of observational tests in weak gravitational fields. On the contrary, the strong field regime is still largely unexplored.…
A key obstacle for theory-specific tests of general relativity is the lack of accurate black-hole solutions in beyond-Einstein theories, especially for moderate to high spins. We address this by developing a general framework--based on…
Astronomical tests of spacetime metric and gravitation theory near the Galactic Center (GC) black hole, Sgr A* have gained momentum with the observations of compact stellar orbits near the black hole and measurement of the black hole…
In this paper we present a fully relativistic approach to modelling both the continuum emission and the reflected fluorescent iron line from a primary X-ray source near a Kerr black hole. The X-ray source is located above an accretion disc…
We demonstrate that the X-ray iron line fitting technique can be leveraged as a powerful probe of the cosmic censorship conjecture. We do this by extending existing emission line models to arbitrary spin parameters of the Kerr metric, no…
In this paper, we investigate the phenomenology of electrically charged black holes in a Lorentz-violating gravitational framework mediated by a background Kalb-Ramond (KR) antisymmetric tensor field. Employing the Gauss-Bonnet theorem in a…
The X-ray spectra of luminous Seyfert 1 galaxies often appear to be reflection dominated. In a number of Narrow Line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies and galactic black holes in the very high state, the variability of the continuum and of the iron…
We obtain approximate analytic expressions for the critical value of the total angular momentum of a non-relativistic test particle moving in the Kerr geometry, such that it will be captured by the black hole. The expressions apply to…
Recent gravitational wave observations and shadow imaging have demonstrated the astonishing consistency of the Kerr paradigm despite all the special symmetries assumed in deriving the Kerr metric. Hence, it is crucial to test the presence…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, but the actual nature of these objects has still to be proven. The analysis of the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a…
In this paper we investigate charged static black holes in 4D for generalized teleparallel models of gravity, based on torsion as the geometric object for describing gravity according to the equivalence principle. As a motivated idea, we…
We study black hole shadows in nonminimally coupled Weyl connection gravity, a metric-affine extension of general relativity in which spacetime is described by a metric and a Weyl vector field encoding non-metricity. Despite going beyond…
The profile of the fluorescent iron line from black hole accretion disks is a powerful diagnostic of black hole properties, such as spin and inclination. The state-of-the-art, however, considers an accretion disk whose angular momentum is…
Recently, a rotating black hole solution was found in Vector-Tensor Galileons modified gravity that has some significant differences from the Kerr black hole solution. We study the iron line shape that is part of the reflection spectrum of…
In this work, we investigate the gravitational signatures of a nonlinear electromagnetic extension of the Reissner-Nordstr\"om solution. We conduct an analysis of light propagation, focusing on the photon sphere, shadow formation, and…
We introduce Gradus.jl, an open-source and publicly available general relativistic ray-tracing toolkit for spectral modelling in arbitrary spacetimes. Our software is written in the Julia programming language, making use of forward-mode…
Einstein's theory 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 observations of binary pulsars. Thanks to a…
In this second paper of our series started with \cite{Berens2024}, we investigate linearized gravitational perturbations of a rotating Kerr black hole in a non-asymptotically flat spacetime with (anti-)de Sitter boundary conditions. Here,…