Related papers: Testing the Weak Equivalence Principle near black …
The recent LIGO detection of gravitational waves from black-hole binaries offers the exciting possibility of testing gravitational theories in the previously inaccessible strong-field, highly relativistic regime. While the LIGO detections…
We study the equivalence principle, regarded as the cornerstone of general relativity, by analyzing the deformation observable of black hole shadows. Such deformation can arise from new physics and may be expressed as a phenomenological…
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity generally violate the strong equivalence principle, namely compact objects have a suppressed coupling to the scalar force, causing them to fall slower. A black hole is the extreme example where such a…
We search for a possible relation between weak gravity conjecture and conformal field theory in the hyperscaling violating and Kerr-Newman-AdS black holes. We deal with the critical points of the black hole systems through the correlation…
X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a powerful tool for testing the Kerr hypothesis and probing the strong gravity regime around accreting black holes. Most tests of General Relativity (GR) assume that the spacetime around a black hole is…
Bumblebee gravity is one of the simplest gravity theories with spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking. Since we know a rotating black hole solution in bumblebee gravity, we can potentially test this model with the available astrophysical…
The weak equivalence principle (WEP) is the cornerstone of gravitational theories. At the local scale, WEP has been tested to high accuracy by various experiments. On the intergalactic distance scale, WEP could be tested by comparing the…
By examining the locations of central black holes in two elliptical galaxies, M\,32 and M\,87, we derive constraints on the violation of the strong equivalence principle for purely gravitational objects, i.e. black holes, of less than about…
The equivalence principle for test gravitational physics strongly constrains dynamics of spacetime, providing a powerful criterion for selecting candidate theories of gravity. However, checking its validity for a particular theory is often…
Accretion disks around black holes radiate a significant fraction of the rest mass of the accreting material in the form of thermal radiation from within a few gravitational radii of the black hole ($ r \lesssim 20 G M / c^{2}$). In…
X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a powerful tool for probing the strong gravity region of black holes and can be used for testing general relativity in the strong field regime. Simplifications of the available relativistic reflection models…
General relativity has passed all solar system experiments and neutron star based tests, such as binary pulsar observations, with flying colors. A more exotic arena for testing general relativity is in systems that contain one or more black…
In this paper, we review our current efforts to test General Relativity in the strong field regime by studying the reflection spectrum of supermassive black holes. So far we have analyzed 11 sources with observations of NuSTAR, Suzaku,…
The black hole X-ray binary H1743-322 lies in a region of the Galaxy with high extinction, and therefore it has not been possible to make a dynamical mass measurement. In this paper we make use of a recent model which uses the X-ray…
Electromagnetic observations have been used over the past decades to understand the nature of black holes and the material around them. Our ability to learn about the fundamental physics relies on our understanding of two key ingredients in…
The black hole weak gravity conjecture (WGC) is a set of linear inequalities on the four-derivative corrections to Einstein--Maxwell theory. Remarkably, in four dimensions, these combinations appear in the $2 \to 2$ photon amplitudes,…
The weak equivalence principle is one of the cornerstone of general relativity. Its validity has been tested with impressive precision in the Solar System, with experiments involving baryonic matter and light. However, on cosmological…
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…
The Novikov-Thorne model is the standard framework for the description of geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disks around black holes and is widely used to study the electromagnetic spectra of accreting black holes. One of the…
The analysis of the properties of the X-ray radiation emitted from geometrically thin accretion disks around black holes can be a powerful tool to test General Relativity in the strong field regime. This chapter reviews the state-of-the-art…