Related papers: Testing General Relativity with black hole X-ray d…
During the past century Einstein's theory of General Relativity gave rise to an experimental triumph, however, there are still aspects of this theory to be measured or more accurately tested. One of the main challenges in experimental…
Assuming that general relativity is the correct theory of gravity in the strong field limit, can gravitational wave observations distinguish between black hole and other compact object sources? Alternatively, can gravitational wave…
Can we give the graviton a mass? Does it even make sense to speak of a massive graviton? In this essay I shall answer these questions in the affirmative. I shall outline an alternative to Einstein Gravity that satisfies the Equivalence…
The presence of spacetime singularities in physically relevant solutions of the Einstein Equations is normally interpreted as a symptom of the breakdown of classical general relativity at very high densities/curvatures. However, despite…
Since the first appearance of general relativity in 1916, various experiments have been conducted to test the theory. Due to the weakness of the interactions involved, all of the documented tests were carried out in a gravitational field…
No. All theoretical predictions for the observational appearance of an accreting supermassive black hole, as measured interferometrically by a sparse Earth-sized array at current observation frequencies, are sensitive to many untested…
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…
It is generally accepted that Einstein's theory will get some as yet unknown corrections, possibly large in the strong field regime. An ideal place to look for these modifications is around the vicinities of compact objects such as black…
The confrontation between Einstein's theory of gravitation and experiment is summarized. Although all current experimental data are compatible with general relativity, the importance of pursuing the quest for possible deviations from…
LISA may make it possible to test the black-hole uniqueness theorems of general relativity, also called the no-hair theorems, by Ryan's method of detecting the quadrupole moment of a black hole using high-mass-ratio inspirals. This test can…
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…
Current astrophysical research suggests that the most persistently luminous objects in the Universe are powered by the flow of matter through accretion disks onto black holes. Accretion disk systems are observed to emit copious radiation…
The coalescences of stellar-mass black-hole binaries through their inspiral, merger, and ringdown are among the most promising sources for ground-based gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. If a GW signal is observed with sufficient…
Gravitational lensing - the deflection of light rays by gravitating matter - has become a major tool in the armoury of the modern cosmologist. Proposed nearly a hundred years ago as a key feature of Einstein's theory of General Relativity,…
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…
Einstein's theory of general relativity models the physical universe using spacetimes which satisfy Einstein's gravitational field equations. To date, Einstein's theory has been enormously successful in modeling observed gravitational…
Gravitational wave astronomy has opened an unprecedented window onto tests of gravity and fundamental physics in the strong-field regime. In this study, we examine a series of well-motivated deviations from the classical Kerr solution of…
General relativity has achieved remarkable experimental and observational success. Critically, recent data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA, Event Horizon Telescope, and GRAVITY collaborations are often credited with \textit{demonstrating} the…
In 1945 Einstein concluded that [1]: "The present theory of relativity is based on a division of physical reality into a metric field (gravitation) on the one hand, and into an electromagnetic field and matter on the other hand. In reality…
The confrontation between Einstein's gravitation theory and experimental results, notably binary pulsar data, is summarized and its significance discussed. Experiment and theory agree at the 10^{-3} level or better. All the basic structures…