Related papers: Constraining spherically symmetric metrics by the …
Black hole shadows and photon spheres offer valuable tools for investigating black hole properties. Recent observations by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration have confirmed the existence of rotating black holes. Black hole parameters…
Can the observation of the "shadow" allow us to distinguish a black hole from a more exotic compact object? We study the motion of photons in a class of vacuum static axially-symmetric space-times that is continuously linked to the…
Future black hole (BH) imaging observations are expected to resolve finer features corresponding to higher-order images of hotspots and of the horizon-scale accretion flow. In spherical spacetimes, the image order is determined by the…
Recent observations of black hole shadows have revolutionized our ability to probe gravity in extreme environments. This manuscript presents a novel analytic method to calculate, in leading-order terms, the key parameters of photon sphere…
In this paper, we introduce a new approach to study the behavior of the photon sphere and shadow radius. Our method uses extended gravitational decoupling and reveals two important analytic results. First, the additional matter field alters…
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 develop a non--perturbative method that yields analytical expressions for the deflection angle of light in a general static and spherically symmetric metric. It is an improvement on a method previously devised by the authors, and…
The 0th order of affine perturbation series of the deflection angle of a ray near a photon sphere is more accurate than a deflection angle in a strong deflection limit, which is used often, because the later has hidden error terms. We…
The presence of a bright "photon ring" surrounding a dark "black hole shadow" has been discussed as an important feature of the observational appearance of emission originating near a black hole. We clarify the meaning and relevance of…
Astrophysical black holes are usually surrounded by an accretion disk. At least parts of these accretion disks consist of a plasma in which light rays with different energies are dispersed. However, we usually do not know the exact…
The distortion of the spacetime structure in the surroundings of black holes affects the trajectories of light rays. As a consequence, black holes can act as gravitational lenses. Observations of type Ia supernovas, show that our Universe…
The deflection of light in the strong field limit is an important test for alternative theories of gravity. However, solutions for the metric that allow for analytic computations are not always available. We implement a hybrid…
Light rays passing very close to black holes may wind several times before escaping. For any given electromagnetic source around the black hole, a distant observer would thus observe two infinite sequences of images on either side of the…
This paper investigates gravitational lensing effects in the presence of plasma in the strong deflection limit, which corresponds to light rays circling around a compact object and forming higher-order images. While previous studies of this…
The notion of non-equatorial spherical photon orbits is among the very special properties of the Kerr spacetime of rotating black holes and is one that leaves a clear mark on the electromagnetic and gravitational wave signature of these…
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration recently released horizon-scale images of the supermassive black hole M87*. These images are consistently described by an optically thin, lensed accretion flow in the Kerr spacetime. General…
Astrophysical black holes (BHs) are universally expected to be described by the Kerr metric, a stationary, vacuum solution of general relativity (GR). Indeed, by imaging M87$^\star$ and Sgr A$^\star$ and measuring the size of their shadows,…
The photon sphere defines the unstable circular orbit of photons in a black hole spacetime. Photons emitted by a source located inside the photon sphere can be gravitationally lensed by the black hole and have time delays when reaching the…
Circular photon orbits have become an attractive topic in recent years. They play extremely important roles in black hole shadows, gravitational lensings, quasi-normal modes, and spacetime topological properties. In our recent work,…
We compare and contrast gravitational lensing, in the strong-field limit, by photon sphere in spherically symmetric regular electrically charged (REC) black holes ($0<b\leq b_E$) and with those by corresponding REC no-horizon spacetimes…