Related papers: Revisiting Stellar Orbits and the Sgr A$^*$ Quadru…
General relativity makes clear predictions about the spacetime geometry around black holes. In the near future, new facilities will have the capability to explore the metric around SgrA$^*$, the supermassive black hole candidate at the…
The "no hair" theorem, a key result in General Relativity, states that an isolated black hole is defined by only three parameters: mass, angular momentum, and electric charge; this asymptotic state is reached on a light-crossing time scale.…
We perform a full analytical and numerical treatment, to the first post-Newtonian (1pN) order, of the general relativistic long-term spin precession of an orbiting gyroscope due to the mass quadrupole moment $J_2$ of its primary without any…
Winds of massive stars are suspected to be inhomogeneous (or clumpy), which biases the measures of their mass loss rates. In High Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), the compact object can be used as an orbiting X-ray point source to probe the…
In general relativity, all black holes in vacuum are described by the Kerr metric, which has only two independent parameters: the mass and the spin. The unique dependence on these two parameters is known as the no-hair theorem. This theorem…
The future space-based gravitational wave detector LISA will be able to measure parameters of coalescing massive black hole binaries, often to extremely high accuracy. Previous work has demonstrated that the black hole spins can have a…
Millisecond pulsars (MSPs) are spun up during their accretion phase in a binary system. The exchange of angular momentum between the accretion disk and the star tends to align the spin and orbital angular momenta on a very short time scale…
Twenty years have passed since the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe, reviving the interest for alternative theories of gravity. Adding a scalar degree of freedom to the usual metric of general relativity is one of the…
If a black hole has hair, how short can this hair be? A partial answer to this intriguing question was recently provided by the 'no-short hair' theorem which asserts that the external fields of a spherically-symmetric electrically neutral…
We study scalar condensation in the background of asymptotically flat spherically symmetric regular Dirichlet stars. We assume that the scalar field decreases as the star surface is approached. Under these circumstances, we prove a no hair…
A moderately spinning neutron star acquires an oblate shape and a spacetime with a significant quadrupole moment. These two properties affect its apparent surface area for an observer at infinity, as well as the lightcurve arising from a…
Recently, one of my articles presented intriguing findings on the superradiant stability of Kerr black holes. These findings drew conclusions that appear to challenge the established ``No Hair Theorem". As is widely known, the ``No Hair…
Spectral and kinematic studies suggest that the nonthermal radio source Sgr A*, located at the center of the Milky Way, is a supermassive compact object with a mass 2-3 million solar masses. Winds from nearby stars, located approximately…
Any measurement made using an N-body simulation is subject to noise due to the finite number of particles used to sample the dark matter distribution function, and the lack of structure below the simulation resolution. This noise can be…
Black holes are said to have no hair because all of their multipole moments can be expressed in terms of just their mass, charge and spin angular momentum. The recent discovery of approximately equation-of-state-independent relations among…
Context. Stellar spin-down is the result of a complex process involving rotation, dynamo, wind and magnetism. Multi-wavelength surveys of solar-like stars have revealed the likely existence of relationships between their rotation, X-ray…
The compact binary system in OJ287 is modelled to contain a spinning primary black hole with an accretion disk and a non-spinning secondary black hole. Using Post Newtonian (PN) accurate equations that include 2.5PN accurate non-spinning…
Accretion via disks can make neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) fast spinning, and some of these stars are detected as millisecond pulsars. Here we report a practical way to find out if a neutron star in a transient LMXB has…
We study the motion of spinning test particles in Kerr spacetime using the Mathisson-Papapetrou equations; we impose different supplementary conditions among the well known Corinaldesi-Papapetrou, Pirani and Tulczyjew's and analyze their…
Astrometric and spectroscopic monitoring of individual stars orbiting the supermassive black hole in the Galactic Center offer a promising way to detect general relativistic effects. While low-order effects are expected to be detected…