Related papers: Can light-rings self-gravitate?
The geometry of black hole spacetimes can be probed with exquisite precision in the gravitational-wave window, and possibly also in the optical regime. We study the accretion of bright spots -- objects which emit strongly in the optical or…
We discuss photon rings around as well as shadows of Kerr black holes immersed in a swirling spacetime (KBHSU). We find that the spin-spin interaction between the angular momentum of the black hole and the swirling of the background leads…
In this work, we focus on the situation where a significant amount of matter could be located close to the event horizon of the central black hole and how it affects the gravitational lensing signal. We consider a simple toy model where the…
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…
Non-singular horizonless ultracompact objects provide a simple resolution to the black holes singularity problem. It has been shown that, if these objects are compact enough to exhibit the presence of the light-ring required to mimic the…
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…
We analyze gravitational lensing, in particular the shadow and photon rings, in the Ernst spacetime, also known as the Schwarzschild-Melvin spacetime, which describes a Schwarzschild black hole immersed in a homogenous magnetic field.…
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,…
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…
Ultracompact objects are self-gravitating systems with a light ring. It was recently suggested that fluctuations in the background of these objects are extremely long-lived and might turn unstable at the nonlinear level, if the object is…
We prove the following theorem: axisymmetric, stationary solutions of the Einstein field equations formed from classical gravitational collapse of matter obeying the null energy condition, that are everywhere smooth and ultracompact (i.e.,…
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…
The singularity of a spherical (Schwarzschild) black hole is a surface, not a point. A freely-falling, non-rotating observer sees Hawking radiation with energy density diverging with radius as $\rho \propto r^{-6}$ near the Schwarzschild…
Using the Ernst formalism, a novel solution of vacuum general relativity (GR) was recently obtained [1], describing a Schwarzschild black hole (BH) immersed in a nonasymptotically flat rotating background, dubbed swirling universe, with the…
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 existence of light rings in a spacetime is closely related to the existence of black hole horizons and observables such as the ringdown and the shadow. Black holes, compared to nonvacuum ultracompact objects, have rather unique…
We study strong gravitational lensing due to a Schwarzschild black hole. Apart from the primary and the secondary images we find a sequence of images on both sides of the optic axis; we call them {\em relativistic images}. These images are…
Modelling of gravitational waves from binary black hole inspiral has played an important role in the recent observations of such signals. The late-stage ringdown phase of the gravitational waveform is often associated with the null particle…
In this paper we consider a classical treatment of a very dense collection of photons forming a self-sustained globe under its own gravitational influence. We call this a "photonic globe" We show that such a dense photonic globe will have a…
We describe a new approach to calculating photon trajectories and gravitational lensing effects in the strong gravitational field of the Kerr black hole. These techniques are applied to explore both the imaging and spectral properties of…