Related papers: RELXILL_NK: A Black Hole Relativistic Reflection M…
We investigate the gravitational lensing properties and the formation of relativistic images associated with black holes modeled by the Reissner-Nordstr\"om and Kerr space-time geometries. In particular, we perform numerical computations of…
Stellar-mass black holes offer what is perhaps the best scenario to test theories of gravity in the strong-field regime. In particular, f(R) theories, which have been widely discuss in a cosmological context, can be constrained through…
Fitting the thermal continuum emission of accreting black holes observed across X-ray bands represents one of the principle means of constraining the properties (mass and spin) of astrophysical black holes. Recent ''continuum fitting''…
Special and general relativistic effects on the X-ray emissions, especially the continuum spectra, from the accretion disks around black holes are investigated using the ray-tracing method. Because both the special and general relativistic…
Weyl conformal symmetry can solve the problem the spacetime singularities present in Einstein's gravity. In a recent paper, two of us have found a singularity-free rotating black hole solution in conformal gravity. In addition to the mass…
The continuum-fitting and the iron line methods are currently the two leading techniques for probing the strong gravity region around accreting black holes. In the present work, we test the Kerr black hole hypothesis with the stellar-mass…
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…
We continue exploring the constraining capabilities of X-ray reflection spectroscopy to test the Kerr-nature of astrophysical black holes and we present the results of our analysis of two NuSTAR observations of Cygnus X-1 in the soft state.…
We studied the relativistic images caused by strong gravitational lensing in Kerr black hole images, which carry some essential signatures about the black hole space-time. We defined a new celestial coordinates whose origin is the center of…
The nature of the super-massive black hole candidates in galactic nuclei can be tested by analyzing the profile of the K$\alpha$ iron line observed in their X-ray spectrum. In this paper, we consider the possibility that the spacetime in…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, as these objects cannot be explained otherwise without introducing new physics. However, there is no observational evidence that the…
We present a new initial data formulation to solve the full set of Einstein equations for spacetimes that contain a black hole under general conditions. The method can be used to construct complete initial data for spacetimes (the full…
The theory of general relativity (GR) is the standard framework for the description of gravitation and the geometric structure of spacetime. With the recent advancement of observational instruments, it has become possible to probe the…
It is thought that the spacetime metric around astrophysical black holes is well described by the Kerr solution of Einstein's gravity. However, a robust observational evidence of the Kerr nature of these objects is still lacking. Here we…
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 study the iron line shape expected in the reflection spectrum of accretion disks around black holes in asymptotically safe gravity. We compare the results of our simulations with the iron line shapes expected in the reflection spectrum…
These notes, based on lectures given at the summer school on Asymptotic Analysis in General Relativity, collect material on the Einstein equations, the geometry of black hole spacetimes, and the analysis of fields on black hole backgrounds.…
The lack of rotating black hole models, which are typically found in nature, in loop quantum gravity (LQG) substantially hinders the progress of testing LQG from observations. Starting with a non-rotating LQG black hole as a seed metric, we…
A fraction of the electromagnetic radiation emitted from the surface of a geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disk of a black hole returns to the disk because of the strong light bending in the vicinity of the compact object…
Since the Bekenstein's proposal that a black hole has equally spaced area spectrum, the quasinormal modes as the characteristic modes of a black hole have been used in obtaining the horizon area spectrum of the black hole. However, the area…