Related papers: Testing General Relativity with black hole X-ray d…
General Relativity (GR) remains the most accurate theory of gravity to date. It has passed many experimental tests in the Solar System as well as binary pulsar, cosmological and gravitational-wave (GW) observations. Some of these tests…
While Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) has been tested extensively in our solar system, it is just beginning to be tested in the strong gravitational fields that surround black holes. As a way to study the behavior of…
The X-ray emission of neutron stars and black holes presents a rich phenomenology that can lead us to a better understanding of their nature and to address more general physics questions: Does general relativity apply in the strong gravity…
Up to now, Einstein's general theory of relativity has passed all experimental tests. But yet we know that it is not a fundamental theory and that it is incompatible with quantum theory. While several extended and improved gravitational…
While tested to a high level of accuracy in the Solar system, general relativity is under the spotlight of both theoreticians and observers on larger scales, mainly because of the need to introduce dark matter and dark energy in the…
Blurred 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 is a powerful tool to probe the…
Despite its success in the weak gravity regime, General Relativity (GR) has yet to be verified in the regime of strong gravity. In this paper, we present the results of detailed ray tracing simulations aiming at clarifying if the combined…
We review the general relativistic theory of the motion, and of the timing, of binary systems containing compact objects (neutron stars or black holes). Then we indicate the various ways one can use binary pulsar data to test the…
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes…
Some of the theoretical challenges posed by the general relativistic description of binary systems of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes) are reviewed. We recall the various ways one can use the theory of the motion, and of the…
Thanks to the recent discoveries of gravitational wave signals from binary black hole mergers by Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory and Advanced Virgo, the genuinely strong-field dynamics of spacetime can now be…
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…
Tests of gravity performed in the solar system show a good agreement with general relativity. The latter is however challenged by observations at larger, galactic and cosmic, scales which are presently cured by introducing "dark matter" or…
In the past decade, we have seen an unprecedented progress in our ability of testing general relativity in the strong field regime with black hole observations. Most studies have focused on the so-called tests of the Kerr hypothesis: they…
The recent detections of gravitational waves from binary systems of black holes are in remarkable agreement with the predictions of General Relativity. In this pedagogical mini-review, I will go through the physics of the different phases…
Neutron stars and black holes are the astrophysical systems with the strongest gravitational fields in the universe. In this article, I review the prospect of probing with observations of such compact objects some of the most intriguing…
In this paper the most recent developments in testing General Relativity in the gravitational field of the Earth with the technique of Satellite Laser Ranging are presented. In particular, we concentrate our attention on some…
Binary pulsars allow us to carry out precision tests of gravity and have placed stringent bounds on a broad class of theories beyond general relativity. Current and future radio telescopes, such as FAST, SKA, and MeerKAT, may find a new…
In this Letter, we demonstrate that short-period stars orbiting around the supermassive black hole in our Galactic Center can successfully be used to probe the gravitational theory in a strong regime. We use 19 years of observations of the…
The theory of general relativity, which is extremely well verified by classic tests in the solar system as well as by the radiation of the binary pulsar, is one of the fundamental tools of nowadays astrophysics. It permits the computation…