Related papers: Is a photon ring invariably a closed structure?
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…
In this work, we theoretically assume that a compact object (CO) can have a dark surface so that the CO is simplified to have no emissions and reflections. Considering that the radius of the surface can be located inside or outside the…
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 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…
The photon ring of a Kerr black hole decomposes into a self-similar hierarchy of subrings. Here, we show that this self-similar structure persists in phase space. Moreover, near the photon shell of bound photon orbits, dynamics are…
The optical appearance of a body compact enough to feature an unstable bound orbit, when surrounded by an accretion disk, is expected to be dominated by a luminous ring of radiation enclosing a central brightness depression typically known…
Under very general assumptions on the accretion flow geometry, images of a black hole illuminated by electromagnetic radiation display a sequence of photon rings (demagnified and rotated copies of the direct image) which asymptotically…
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…
Simulated images of a black hole surrounded by optically thin emission typically display two main features: a central brightness depression and a narrow, bright "photon ring" consisting of strongly lensed images superposed on top of the…
Recently the Event Horizon Telescope observed black holes at event horizon scales for the first time, enabling us to now test the existence of event horizons. Although event horizons have by definition no observable features, one can look…
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…
In this work, we study the optical properties of a class of magnetically charged rotating black hole spacetimes. The black holes in question are assumed to be immersed in the quintessence field, and subsequently, the resulting black hole…
In the dark energy star picture a compact object is transparent at radio and optical frequencies, and acts as a defocusing lens. Thus the object itself appears as a luminous disk whose surface brightness reflects the surface brightness of…
Light propagating through a perturbed spacetime could imprint the underlying gravitational waveform directly onto electromagnetic observables. In this Letter, we develop a covariant perturbative framework for polarized photon propagation in…
In this work, we investigate the critical behavior of photon rings in the Kerr-Bertotti-Robinson spacetime, describing a rotating black hole immersed in a background magnetic field. We analyze the radial and angular motions of photons under…
We propose a new test of strong-field general relativity (GR) based on the universal interferometric signature of the black hole photon ring. The photon ring is a narrow ring-shaped feature, predicted by GR but not yet observed, that…
A black hole image contains a bright ring of photons that have closely circled the black hole on their way from the source to the detector. Here, we study the photon ring of a rotating black hole which is pierced by a global hyper-light…
We examine the shadow cast by a Kerr black hole, focusing on constraints on photons corresponding to different shadow boundaries. The photons are related to different orbital ranges and impact parameter values, creating a map of the shadow…
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…
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…