Related papers: A Primer to Slow Light
Alvarez-Dominguez, Garay, Martin-Martinez, and Polo-Gomez have suggested that ``it is not possible to concentrate enough light to precipitate the formation of an event horizon. We argue that the dissipative quantum effects coming from the…
Black holes acting as gravitational lenses produce, besides the primary and secondary weak field images, two infinite sets of relativistic images. These images can be studied using the strong field limit, an analytic method based on a…
This is the mini-review on Dark Matter in the 2012 edition of the Particle Data Group's Review of Particle Properties. After briefly summarizing the arguments in favor of the existence of Dark Matter, we list possible candidates, ranging in…
Black holes are unique among astrophysical sources: they are the simplest macroscopic objects in the Universe, and they are extraordinary in terms of their ability to convert energy into electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. Our…
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the exciting field of black hole quasi-normal modes and its capabilities to test general relativity in the 21st century. After motivating this line of research, we provide a…
Besides being a source of energy, light can also cool gases of atoms down to the lowest temperatures ever measured, where atomic motion almost stops. The research field of cold atoms has emerged as a multidisciplinary one, highly relevant,…
Light rays passing very close to a black hole may experience very strong deviations. Two geometries were separately considered in the recent literature: a source behind the black hole (standard gravitational lensing); a source in front of…
We present, in closed analytic form, a general stationary, slowly rotating black hole, which is solution to a large class of alternative theories of gravity in four dimensions. In these theories, the Einstein-Hilbert action is supplemented…
The aim of this paper is to present the case that stellar mass primordial black holes make up the dark matter component of the Universe. A near critical density of compact bodies implies that most lines of sight will be gravitationally…
Black-hole perturbation theory is a useful tool to investigate issues in astrophysics, high-energy physics, and fundamental problems in gravity. It is often complementary to fully-fledged nonlinear evolutions and instrumental to interpret…
Black Holes are unique objects which allow for meaningful theoretical studies of strong gravity and even quantum gravity effects. An infalling and a distant observer would have very different views on the structure of the world. However, a…
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…
The idea that dark matter in the form of small compact bodies (most plausibly planetary mass primordial black holes) betrays its presence by the microlensing of quasars, has been stimulated by statistical studies of quasar light curves and…
It is suggested that slow light could be used to test for relative motion with respect to an absolute reference frame at a sensitivity v ~ 10^{-3} m/s.
This work introduces a synergistic combination of analytical methods and numerical simulations to study the propagation of weak wave-packet modes in an optical medium containing the analog of a pair white-black hole. We apply our tools to…
Beyond black holes and neutron stars, new hypothetical compact objects have been proposed as potential astrophysical entities. In general, their properties have not yet been fully explored or understood, nor has it been proven whether or…
Primordial micro black holes can constitute dark matter if short-distance gravity is modified by extra dimensions or a large number of species and if the memory-burden effect sufficiently suppresses Hawking evaporation. The resulting black…
A distinct visual signature occurs in black holes that are surrounded by optically thin and geometrically thick emission regions. This signature is a sharp-edged dip in brightness that is coincident with the black-hole shadow, which is the…
A beyond Horndeski theory is considered that admits wormholes, black holes and naked singularities. In this theory the shadow images of the black holes and the exotic compact objects (ECOs), illuminated by an optically and geometrically…
We develop an analytical formalism for studying optical analogues of spherically symmetric black-hole spacetimes. We demonstrate the exact similarity between the electromagnetic wave equations in an inhomogeneous medium in flat spacetime…