Related papers: Black Hole Photon Rings Beyond General Relativity
The Kerr black holes possess a photon region with prograde and retrograde orbits radii, respectively, $M\leq r_p^-\leq 3M$ and $3M\leq r_p^+\leq 4M$, and thereby always cast a closed photon ring or a shadow silhouette for $a\leq M$. For…
The imaging by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) of the supermassive central objects at the heart of the M87 and Milky Way (Sgr A$^\star$) galaxies, has marked the first step into peering at the photon rings and central brightness…
Motivated by the prospect of measuring a black hole photon ring, in previous work we explored the interferometric signature produced by a bright, narrow curve in the sky. Interferometric observations of such a curve measure its "projected…
Interpreting horizon-scale observations of astrophysical black holes demands a general understanding of null geodesics in the Kerr spacetime. These may be divided into two classes: "direct" rays that primarily determine the observational…
The images of supermassive black holes surrounded by optically-thin, radiatively-inefficient accretion flows, like those observed with the Event Horizon Telescope, are characterized by a bright ring of emission surrounding the black-hole…
We explore the universal symmetries of the black hole photon ring in a wide range of non-Kerr spacetimes, including the Kerr-Newman, Kerr-Sen, Kerr-Bardeen, and Kerr-Hayward metrics. The demagnification exponent ($\gamma$) controls the size…
In the presence of a black hole, light sources connect to observers along multiple paths. As a result, observed brightness fluctuations must be correlated across different times and positions in black hole images. Photons that execute…
Currently envisioned extensions of the Event Horizon Telescope to space will soon target the black hole photon ring: a narrow ring-shaped imprint of a black hole's strong gravity produced in its images by highly bent photon trajectories. In…
Considerable attention has recently focused on gravity theories obtained by extending general relativity with additional scalar, vector, or tensor degrees of freedom. In this paper, we show that the black-hole solutions of these theories…
We study the capabilities of present and future radio very-long-baseline-interferometry arrays to distinguish black holes from horizonless spacetimes. We consider an example of a horizonless spacetime, obtained by overspinning a regular…
Light circling around an astrophysical black hole can spend a long time skirting its unstably bound photon orbits before escaping to infinity. To a distant observer, this orbiting light would appear as a bright ring encircling the image of…
Recently, the image of a Schwarzschild black hole with an accretion disk has been revisited, and it showed that the "photon ring", defined as highly bent light rays that intersect the disk plane more than twice, is extremely narrow and…
In General Relativity, the spacetimes of black holes have three fundamental properties: (i) they are the same, to lowest order in spin, as the metrics of stellar objects; (ii) they are independent of mass, when expressed in geometric units;…
The standard Black Holes (BHs) in General Relativity, as well as other ultra-compact objects (with or without an event horizon) admit planar circular photon orbits. These light rings (LRs) determine several spacetime properties. For…
In general relativity, astrophysical black holes are uniquely described by the Kerr metric. Observational tests of the Kerr nature of these compact objects and, hence, of general relativity, require a metric that encompasses a broader class…
The Kerr spacetime is symmetric with respect to a well-defined equatorial plane. When testing the equatorial reflection symmetry of an isolated black hole, one is at the same time testing the Kerr hypothesis in General Relativity. In this…
It has been reported that the photon ring structure in black hole images produces strong and universal interferometric signatures on long interferometric baselines, holding promise for measuring black hole parameters and testing general…
The direct detection of a bright, ring-like structure in horizon-resolving images of M87* by the Event Horizon Telescope is a striking validation of general relativity. The angular size and shape of the ring is a degenerate measure of the…
In general relativity, the Kerr metric uniquely represents the geometry surrounding an isolated, rotating black hole. An identification of significant non-Kerr features in some astrophysical source would then provide a `smoking-gun' for the…
The silhouette of a black hole having a critical curve (an unstable bound photon orbit) when illuminated by an optically thin accretion disk whose emission is confined to the equatorial plane shows a distinctive central brightness…