Related papers: Testing General Relativity with Black Holes
While Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity (GR) has been tested extensively in our solar system, it is just beginning to be tested in the strong gravitational fields that surround black holes. As a way to study the behavior of…
Electromagnetic observations have been used over the past decades to understand the nature of black holes and the material around them. Our ability to learn about the fundamental physics relies on our understanding of two key ingredients in…
Binary pulsars allow us to carry out precision tests of gravity and have placed stringent bounds on a broad class of theories beyond general relativity. Current and future radio telescopes, such as FAST, SKA, and MeerKAT, may find a new…
Although General Relativity (GR) has been tested extensively in the weak gravity regime, similar tests in the strong gravity regime are still missing. In this paper we explore the possibility to use X-ray spectropolarimetric observations of…
Astrophysical tests of general relativity belong to two categories: 1) "internal", i.e. consistency tests within the theory (for example, tests that astrophysical black holes are indeed described by the Kerr solution and its perturbations),…
The most simple observed cases of gravitational lensing of distant quasars and galaxies by galaxies and clusters of galaxies are used to test Einstein's theory of General Relativity and Newtonian Gravity over galactic and intergalactic…
Observations of compact objects in the electromagnetic spectrum and the detection of gravitational waves from them can lead to quantitative tests of the theory of general relativity in the strong-field regime following two very different…
While tested to a high level of accuracy in the Solar system, general relativity is under the spotlight of both theoreticians and observers on larger scales, mainly because of the need to introduce dark matter and dark energy in the…
Some of the theoretical challenges posed by the general relativistic description of binary systems of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes) are reviewed. We recall the various ways one can use the theory of the motion, and of the…
Relativistic reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of accreting black holes. In the presence of high quality data and with the correct astrophysical model, X-ray reflection spectroscopy can be quite a powerful tool…
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…
The recent LIGO detection of gravitational waves from black-hole binaries offers the exciting possibility of testing gravitational theories in the previously inaccessible strong-field, highly relativistic regime. While the LIGO detections…
For nearly a century, Einstein's theory of gravity has been the standard theory for describing gravitational phenomena in our universe. Along with its successes, limitations of the theory from theoretical (e.g., singularities) and…
Neutron stars and black holes are the astrophysical systems with the strongest gravitational fields in the universe. In this article, I review the prospect of probing with observations of such compact objects some of the most intriguing…
Astrophysical black hole candidates are thought to be the Kerr black holes predicted by General Relativity, but the actual nature of these objects has still to be proven. The Kerr black hole hypothesis can be tested by observing strong…
We review the general relativistic theory of the motion, and of the timing, of binary systems containing compact objects (neutron stars or black holes). Then we indicate the various ways one can use binary pulsar data to test the…
The X-ray emission of neutron stars and black holes presents a rich phenomenology that can lead us to a better understanding of their nature and to address more general physics questions: Does general relativity apply in the strong gravity…
Despite its success in the weak gravity regime, General Relativity (GR) has yet to be verified in the regime of strong gravity. In this paper, we present the results of detailed ray tracing simulations aiming at clarifying if the combined…
Most of the X-ray emission from luminous accreting black holes emerges from within 20 gravitational radii. The effective emission radius is several times smaller if the black hole is rapidly spinning. General Relativistic effects can then…
Tests of Einstein's general theory of relativity have mostly been carried out in weak gravitational fields where the space-time curvature effects are first-order deviations from Newton's theory. Binary pulsars provide a means of probing the…