We compute the shadows of colliding black holes using the Kastor-Traschen cosmological multiblack hole solution that is an exact solution describing the collision of maximally charged black holes with a positive cosmological constant. We find that in addition to the shadow of each black hole, an eyebrowlike structure appears as the black holes come close to each other. These features can be used as probes to find the multiblack hole system at the final stage of its merger process.
Shadows of multi-black holes have structures distinct from the mere superposition of the shadow of a single black hole: the eyebrow-like structures outside the main shadows and the deformation of the shadows. We present analytic estimates of these structures using the static multi-black hole solution (Majumdar-Papapetrou solution). We show that the width of the eyebrow is related with the distance between the black holes and that the shadows are deformed into ellipses due to the presence of the second black holes. These results are helpful to understand qualitatively the features of the shadow…
The correspondence between black holes and colliding waves extends to cover the near horizon geometry of rotating black holes and colliding waves with cross polarization. Extreme Kerr and Kerr-Newman geometries are given as examples.
The rotating black holes in the quintessential dark energy correspond to three horizons: inner, outer, and quintessential horizon. The domain of outer communication is the region between outer and quintessential horizon. Here, in this work we study the photon region and shadows of the quintessential dark energy black holes when the observer stays statically in the domain of outer communication. The quintessential dark energy black holes shadow characterizes by its mass $(M)$, spin parameter $(a)$, quintessential dark energy parameter $(ω_q)$, and normalization factor $(γ)$. The dark energy par…
Some indication of conditions that are necessary for the formation of black holes from the collision of bubbles during a supercooled phase transition in the the early universe are explored. Two colliding bubbles can never form a black hole. Three colliding bubbles can refocus the energy in their walls to the extent that it becomes infinite.
A black hole casts a shadow as an optical appearance because of its strong gravitational field. We study the shadow cast by the five-dimensional Myers-Perry black hole with equal rotation parameters. We demonstrate that the null geodesic equations can be integrated that allows us to investigate the shadow cast by a black hole. The shadow of a black hole is found to be a dark zone covered by deformed circle. Interestingly, the shapes of the black hole shadow are more distorted and size decreases for larger black hole spins. Interestingly, it turns out that, for fixed values of rotation paramete…
This is the writeup of the talk I gave at the Yukawa International Symposium at Kyoto, Japan on June 29, 1999. The talk summarizes the present status of the close limit approximation for colliding black holes.
The so-called black hole shadow is not a silhouette of a black hole but an image of a collapsing object or a white hole. Hence it is non-trivial whether black hole shadows merge with each other when black holes coalesce with each other. In this paper, by analyzing the null geodesic generators of the event horizon in Kastor-Traschen spacetime which describes a coalescence of black boles, we see that observers who will never see a merger of black hole shadows exist.
We investigate the effect of the cosmological constant on the angular size of a black hole shadow. It is known that the accelerated expansion which is created by the cosmological constant changes the angular size of the black hole shadow for static observers. However, the shadow size must be calculated for the appropriate cosmological observes. We calculate the angular size of the shadow measured by cosmological comoving observers by projecting the shadow angle to this observer rest frame. We show that the shadow size tends to zero as the observer approaches the cosmological horizon. We estima…
When one splits spacetime into space plus time, the spacetime curvature (Weyl tensor) gets split into an "electric" part E_{jk} that describes tidal gravity and a "magnetic" part B_{jk} that describes differential dragging of inertial frames. We introduce tools for visualizing B_{jk} (frame-drag vortex lines, their vorticity, and vortexes) and E_{jk} (tidal tendex lines, their tendicity, and tendexes), and also visualizations of a black-hole horizon's (scalar) vorticity and tendicity. We use these tools to elucidate the nonlinear dynamics of curved spacetime in merging black-hole binaries.
The shadows cast by non-rotating and rotating modified gravity (MOG) black holes are determined by the two parameters mass $M$ and angular momentum $J=Ma$. The sizes of the shadows cast by the spherically symmetric static Schwarzschild-MOG and Kerr-MOG rotating black holes increase significantly as the free parameter $α$ is increased from zero. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) shadow image measurements can determine whether Einstein's general relativity is correct or whether it should be modified in the presence of strong gravitational fields.
Shadows of black holes surrounded by an optically thin emitting medium have been extensively discussed in the literature. The Hioki-Maeda algorithm is a simple recipe to characterize the shape of these shadows and determine the parameters of the system. Here we extend their idea to the case of a dressed black hole, namely a black hole surrounded by a geometrically thin and optically thick accretion disk. While the boundary of the shadow of black holes surrounded by an optically thin emitting medium corresponds to the apparent photon capture sphere, that of dressed black holes corresponds to th…
In this work, we explore the connection between the critical curves ("shadows") and the quasinormal mode frequencies (in the eikonal limit) of Kerr black holes. This mapping has been previously established for non-rotating black holes. We show that, the shadow seen by an distant observer at a given inclination angle, can be mapped to a family of quasinormal modes with $m/(\ell+1/2)$ bounded within certain range, where $m$ is is azimuthal node number and $\ell$ is the angular node number. We discuss the possibility of testing such relation with space-borne gravitational wave detectors and the n…
We summarize the state of the art of the ``close approximation'' to black hole collisions. We discuss results to first and second order in perturbation theory for head-on collisions of momentarily-stationary and non-stationary black holes and discuss the near-future prospect of non-axisymmetric collisions.
Supermassive black hole (BH) binaries are thought to produce self-lensing flares (SLF) when the two BHs are aligned with the line-of-sight. If the binary orbit is observed nearly edge-on, we find a distinct feature in the light curve imprinted by the BH shadow from the lensed BH. We study this feature by ray-tracing in a binary model and predict that 1\% of the current binary candidates could show this feature. Our BH tomography method proposed here could make it possible to extract BH shadows that are spatially unresolvable by high-resolution VLBI.
We study the black hole's shadow for Schwarzschild - de Sitter and Kerr - de Sitter metrics with the contribution of the cosmological constant Λ. Based on the reported parameters of the M87* black hole shadow we obtain constraints for the $Λ$ and show the agreement with the cosmological data. It is shown that, the coupling of the Λ-term with the spin parameter reveals peculiarities for the photon spheres and hence for the shadows. Within the parametrized post-Newtonian formalism the constraint for the corresponding Λ-determined parameter is obtained.
The observation of the shadows cast by the event horizon of black holes on the light emitted in its neighborhood is the target of current very-long-baseline-interferometric observations. When considering supermassive black holes, the light source is the black hole's accretion disk, and therefore, the observation of the shadow may reveal information about the black hole and the accretion flow. We here study the shadows cast by stellar-mass black holes that are illuminated not by an accretion disk but by a stellar companion in a wide binary orbit. We calculate the shadows produced in such a conf…
We study the shadow of the Cardoso-Pani-Rico (CPR) black hole for different values of the black hole spin $a_*$, the deformation parameters $ε_3^t$ and $ε_3^r$, and the viewing angle $i$. We find that the main impact of the deformation parameter $ε_3^t$ is the change of the size of the shadow, while the deformation parameter $ε_3^r$ affects the shape of its boundary. In general, it is impossible to test the Kerr metric, because the shadow of a Kerr black hole can be reproduced quite well by a black hole with non-vanishing $ε_3^t$ or $ε_3^r$. Deviations from the Kerr geometry could be constrain…
We study the shadows cast by the different types of rotating regular black holes viz. Ayón-Beato-García {(ABG)}, Hayward, and Bardeen. These black holes have in addition to the total mass ($M$) and rotation parameter ($a$), different parameters as electric charge ($Q$), deviation parameter ($g$), and magnetic charge ($g_{*}$), respectively. Interestingly, the size of the shadow is affected by these parameters in addition to the rotation parameter. We found that the radius of the shadow in each case decreases monotonically and the distortion parameter increases when the value of these parameter…
In this paper we consider collision of two particle near the STU black hole and calculate center of mass energy. In the case of uncharged black hole we find that the maximum energy obtained near the black hole horizon which similarly happen for charged black hole. We verify that the black hole charge may be decreased or increased the center of mass energy near the black hole horizon.
The black hole shadow, first observed by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2017, is the newest method for studying black holes and understanding gravity. Much work has gone into understanding the shadow of a Kerr black hole, including all of the complex astrophysics of the accretion disk, and there are numerous studies of the ideal shadow in non-Kerr black holes and exotic compact objects. This paper presents one of the first studies of the black hole shadow of non-Kerr black holes when the illumination source is an accretion disk. In particular, the ability of current and future very long baseli…
The recent detection of gravitational waves from black hole coalescences and the first image of the black hole shadow enhance the possibilities of testing gravitational theories in the strong-field regime. In this paper, we study the physical properties and the shadow image of a class of Kerr-like rotating black holes, whose $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry is generically broken. Such black hole solutions could arise in effective low-energy theories of a fundamental quantum theory of gravity, such as string theory. Within a theory-agnostic framework, we require that the Kerr-like solutions are asymptot…
We consider a simple model of a black hole surrounded by a toroidal structure and experiencing deformation due to magnetic field and the tidal force. For this system we construct the shadows of Preston-Poisson black hole, apply it to supermassive black hole $M87^*$ and compare it with the shadows of corresponding Schwarzschild and Kerr black holes. We find that for large deviation parameters $B$ and $E$ the shadow of Preston-Poisson black hole is clearly distinguishable from Kerr black hole provided the angular resolution of measurements is of order $μ\mathrm{arcsec}$.
We study the local shadow of the Schwarzschild black hole with a quadrupole distortion and the influence of the external gravitational field on the photon dynamics. The external matter sources modify the light ring structure and lead to the appearance of multiple shadow images. In the case of negative quadrupole moments we identify the most prominent mechanism causing multiple shadow formation. Furthermore, we obtain a condition under which this mechanism can be realized. This condition depends on the quadrupole moment, but also on the position of the observer and the celestial sphere.
Perturbation techniques can be used as an alternative to supercomputer calculations in calculating gravitational radiation emitted by colliding black holes, provided the process starts with the black holes close to each other. We give a summary of the method and of the results obtained for various initial configurations, both axisymmetric and without symmetry: Initially static, boosted towards each other, counter-rotating, or boosted at an angle (pseudo-inspiral). Where applicable, we compare the perturbation results with supercomputer calculations.
We present a characteristic algorithm for computing the perturbations of a Schwarzschild spacetime by means of solving the Teukolsky equations. Our methods and results are expected to have direct bearing on the study of binary black holes presently underway using a fully {\em nonlinear} characteristic code \cite{Gomez98a}.
A photon sphere is known as the geometrical structure shaping a black hole shadow. The mechanism is well understood for static or stationary black hole spacetimes such as the Schwarzschild and the Kerr spacetimes. In this paper, we investigate and explicitly specify a photon sphere that shapes a black hole shadow in a dynamical spacetime while taking the global structure of the spacetime into account. We consider dynamical and eternal black hole cases of the Vaidya spacetime, which represents a spherically symmetric black hole with accreting null dust. First, we numerically show that there are…
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 Schwarzschild metric through the value of one parameter that can be interpreted as a measure of the deformation of the source. We investigate the lensing effect and shadow produced by the source with the aim of comparing the expected image with the shadow of a Schwarzschild black hole. In the context of astrophysical black holes we found that it may not be possible …
Recently, Banados, Silk and West (BSW) showed that the total energy of two colliding test particles has no upper limit in their center of mass frame in the neighborhood of an extreme Kerr black hole, even if these particles were at rest at infinity in the infinite past. We call this mechanism the BSW mechanism or BSW process. The large energy of such particles would generate strong gravity, although this has not been taken into account in the BSW analysis. A similar mechanism is seen in the collision of two spherical test shells in the neighborhood of an extreme Reissner-Nordström black hole. …
The colliding plane wave metric discovered by Ferrari and Ibañez to be locally isometric to the interior of a Schwarzschild black hole is extended to the case of general axion-dilaton black holes. Because the transformation maps either black hole horizon to the focal plane of the colliding waves, this entire class of colliding plane wave spacetimes only suffers from the formation of spacetime singularities in the limits where the inner horizon itself is singular, which occur in the Schwarzschild and dilaton black hole limits. The supersymmetric limit corresponding to the extreme axion-dilaton …
We have investigated the dynamics of particles in the vicinity of a static spherically symmetric black hole in f(R) gravity. Using the Euler-Lagrange method the dynamical equations of a neutral particle are obtained. Assuming that the particle is initially moving in the innermost stable circular orbit, we have calculated its escape velocity, after a collision with some other particle. The conditions for the escape of colliding particles are discussed. The effective potential and the trajectories of the escaping particles are studied graphically.
We study the shadow of a rotating squashed Kaluza-Klein (KK) black hole and the shadow is found to possess distinct properties from those of usual rotating black holes. It is shown that the shadow for a rotating squashed KK black hole is heavily influenced by the specific angular momentum of photon from the fifth dimension. Especially, as the parameters lie in a certain special range, there is no any shadow for a black hole, which does not emerge for the usual black holes. In the case where the black hole shadow exists, the shadow shape is a perfect black disk and its radius decreases with the…
In this paper we study the shadow of rotating Kaluza-Klein (KK) black holes and the connection between the shadow radius and the real part of quasi-normal modes (QNMs) in the eiokonal limit. In addition we have explored the quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) in the rotating KK black hole.
The shadow of a black hole can be one of the strong observational evidences for stationary black holes. If we see shadows at the center of galaxies, we would say whether the observed compact objects are black holes. In this paper, we consider a formula for the contour of a shadow in an asymptotically-flat, stationary, and axisymmetric black hole spacetime. We show that the formula is useful for obtaining the contour of the shadow of several black holes such as the Kerr-Newman black hole and rotating regular black holes. Using the formula, we can obtain new examples of the contour of the shadow…
Kerr black holes coupled to quantized bosonic fields display a special version of the Hawking effect, governed by the superradiance condition. This leads to rapid growth of boson cloud through spontaneous creation, leading to slowing down of the black hole, and detectable as growth of the black hole shadow. This can be developed into a technique for searching or constraining the existence of ultralight bosons. We study this phenomenon for spin-0 bosons in the shadow of a black hole, with a detailed analysis of Sgr$A^*$, and put estimates on the evolution time scales and subsequent change in th…
We give a brief review on the formation and the calculation of black hole shadow. Firstly, we introduce the conception of black hole shadow and the current works on a variety of black hole shadows. Secondly, we present main methods of calculating photon sphere radius and shadow radius, and then explain how the photon sphere affect the boundary of black hole shadow. We review the analytical calculation for black hole shadows which have analytic expressions for shadow boundary due to the integrable photon motion system. And we introduce the fundamental photon orbits which can explain the pattern…
The relation between the black hole shadow and the black hole thermodynamics is investigated. We find that the phase structure can be reflected by the shadow radius for the spherically symmetric black hole. We also find that the shadow size gives correct information but the distortion of the shadow gives wrong information of the phase structure for the axially symmetric black hole.
We briefly review some recent advances in the study of the shadows of rotating black holes in alternative theories. The size and the shape of the shadow depend on the mass and the angular momentum, and they can also depend on other parameters specific of the particular model adopted. As an example, we show the results corresponding to a rotating braneworld black hole.
We study the prospects of using the low-redshift and high-redshift black hole shadows as new cosmological standard rulers for measuring cosmological parameters. We show that, using the low-redshift observation of the black hole shadow of M87$^\star$, the Hubble constant can be independently determined with a precision of about $13\%$ as $H_0=70\pm 9$ km s$^{-1}$ Mpc$^{-1}$. The high-redshift observations of super-massive black hole shadows may accurately determine a combination of parameters $H_0$ and ${Ω_{\rm m}}$, and we show by a simple simulation that combining them with the type Ia supern…
Metric of axially symmetric asymptotically flat black holes in an arbitrary metric theory of gravity can be represented in the general form which depends on infinite number of parameters. We constrain this general class of metrics by requiring the existence of additional symmetries, which lead to the separation of variables in the Hamilton-Jacobi and Klein-Gordon equations, and show that once the metric functions change sufficiently moderately in some region near the black hole, the black-hole shadow depends on a few deformation parameters only. We analyze the influence of these parameters on …
It was believed that when gravitational, electromagnetic and scalar waves interact, a spacelike curvature singularity or Cauchy horizon develops because of mutual focusing. We show with an exact solution that the collision of Einstein-Maxwell-Scalar fields, in contrast to previous studies, predicts singularities on null surfaces and that this is a transition phase between spacelike singularities and regular horizons. Divergences of tidal forces in the null singularities is shown to be weaker relative to the spacelike ones. Using the local isometry between colliding plane waves and black holes,…
Arguments for black hole formation in collisions of high-energy particles have rested on the emergence of a closed trapped surface in the classical geometry of two colliding Aichelburg-Sexl solutions. Recent analysis has, however, shown that curvatures and quantum fluctuations are large on this apparent horizon, potentially invalidating a semiclassical analysis. We show that this problem is an artifact of the unphysical classical point-particle limit: for a particle described by a quantum wavepacket, or for a continuous matter distribution, trapped surfaces indeed form in a controlled regime.
Light bending by the strong gravity around the black hole will form the so-called black hole shadow, the shape of which can shed light on the structure of the near-horizon geometry to possibly reveal novel physics of strong gravity and black hole. In this work, we adopt both analytical and ray-tracing methods to study the black hole shadow in the presence of the infrared structure of gravity theory, which manifests the asymptotic symmetries of spacetime as the supertranslation soft hairs of the black hole. Though the black hole metrics with and without the soft hair are related by large gauge …
We have investigated the shadow of a Konoplya-Zhidenko rotating non-Kerr black hole with an extra deformation parameter. The spacetime structure arising from the deformed parameter affects sharply the black hole shadow. With the increase of the deformation parameter, the size of the shadow of black hole increase and its shape becomes more rounded for arbitrary rotation parameter. The D-shape shadow of black hole emerges only in the case $a<\frac{2\sqrt{3}}{3}M$ with the proper deformation parameter. Especially, the black hole shadow possesses a cusp shape with small eye lashes in the cases wit…
The hoop conjecture is well confirmed in momentarily static spaces, but it has not been investigated systematically for the system with relativistic motion. To confirm the hoop conjecture for non-time-symmetric initial data, we consider the initial data of two colliding black holes with momentum and search an apparent horizon that encloses two black holes. In testing the hoop conjecture, we use two definitions of gravitational mass : one is the ADM mass and the other is the quasi-local mass defined by Hawking. Although both definitions of gravitational mass give fairly consistent picture of th…
A black hole embedded within a bright, optically thin emitting region imprints a nearly circular "shadow" on its image, corresponding to the observer's line-of-sight into the black hole. The shadow boundary depends on the black hole's mass and spin, providing an observable signature of both properties via high resolution images. However, standard expressions for the shadow boundary are most naturally parametrized by Boyer-Lindquist radii rather than by image coordinates. We explore simple, approximate parameterizations for the shadow boundary using ellipses and a family of curves known as lima…
We have studied numerically the shadows of Bonnor black dihole through the technique of backward ray-tracing. The presence of magnetic dipole yields non-integrable photon motion, which affects sharply the shadow of the compact object. Our results show that there exists a critical value for the shadow. As the magnetic dipole parameter is less than the critical value, the shadow is a black disk, but as the magnetic dipole parameter is larger than the critical one, the shadow becomes a concave disk with eyebrows possessing a self-similar fractal structure. These behavior are very similar to those…
We study the prospect of Bardeen black holes in explaining the observed shadow of Sgr A* and M87*. Bardeen black holes are regular black holes endowed with a magnetic monopole charge that arise in Einstein gravity coupled to non-linear electrodynamics. These black holes are interesting as they can evade the r = 0 curvature singularity arising in general relativity. It is therefore worthwhile to look for signatures of Bardeen black holes in astrophysical observations. With two successive release of black hole images by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, the scope to test the natur…
We have studied the shadow of a disformal Kerr black hole with an extra deformation parameter, which belongs to non-stealth rotating solutions in quadratic Degenerate Higher Order Scalar Tensor (DHOST) theory. Our result show that the size of the shadow increases with the deformation parameter for the black hole with arbitrary spin parameter. However, the effect of the deformation parameter on the shadow shape depends heavily on the spin parameter of black hole and the sign of the deformation parameter. The change of the shadow shape becomes more distinct for the black hole with the more quick…
Previous works on black hole shadows have been primarily focused on studying shadows in asymptotically flat and anti-de Sitter space times. In the present work, we find general expressions for asymptotically de Sitter black hole shadow as seen by static and comoving observers, for any spherically symmetric black hole solution, in any space time dimension in generic theories of gravity. As test cases, we use the derived general expressions to study the shadow of three different black hole solutions: the four dimensional Reissner-Nordström de Sitter black hole, the recently proposed four dimensi…
We have studied the shadows of a Schwarzschild black hole under a special polar gravitational perturbation, which is a particular solution of Einstein equations expanded up to first order. It is shown that the black hole shadow changes periodically with time and the change of shadow depends on the Legendre polynomial order parameter l and the frequency σ of gravitational wave. For the odd order of Legendre polynomial, the center of shadow oscillates along the direction which is vertical to equatorial plane. For even l, the center of shadow does not move, but the shadow alternately stretches an…
We use null hypersurface techniques in a new approach to calculate the retarded waveform from a binary black hole merger in the close approximation. The process of removing ingoing radiation from the system leads to two notable features in the shape of the close approximation waveform for a head-on collision of black holes: (i) an initial quasinormal ringup and (ii) weak sensitivity to the parameter controlling the collision velocity. Feature (ii) is unexpected and has the potential importance of enabling the design of an efficient template for extracting the gravitational wave signal from the…
We discuss the emergence of black hole shadow and photon-sphere in the context of $f(R)$ gravity. It is shown that the shadow is exponentially sensitive to linear instabilities of metric coming from some $f(R)$ solutions. Thus, the instabilities of photon circular trajectories, delimiting the black hole photon-sphere, are double exponentialized. Specifically we individuate two Lyapunov exponents, rather than only one, related to two different sources of chaos in geodesic orbits as a sort of butterfly effect. Such a result violates the black hole chaos bound proposed by Maldacena, Shenker and S…
We investigate the shadow cast by a sort of new regular black holes which are characterized by an asymptotically Minkowski core and the Sub-Planckian curvature. Firstly, we extend the metric with spherical symmetry to the one of rotating Kerr-like black holes and derive the null geodesics with circular orbit near the horizon of the black hole, and then plot the shadow of black holes with different values of the deviation parameter. It is found that the size of the shadow shrinks with the increase of the deviation parameter, while the shape of the shadow becomes more deformed. In particular, by…
We study the shadow cast by the H$D$ Schwarzschild-Tangherlini black hole, and analytically calculate the influence of extra dimensions on the shadow of a black hole. A black hole casts a shadow as an optical appearance because of its strong gravitational field which is known to be a dark zone covered by a circle for a Schwarzschild black hole. We demonstrate that the null geodesic equation can be integrated by Hamilton-Jacobi approach, which enables us to investigate the shadow cast by the H$D$ Schwarzschild-Tangherlini black holes. Interestingly, it turns out that, for fixed values of the ma…
In this article, we provide a review of the current state of the research of the black hole shadow, focusing on analytical (as opposed to numerical and observational) studies. We start with particular attention to the definition of the shadow and its relation to the often used concepts of escape cone, critical impact parameter and particle cross-section. For methodological purposes, we present the derivation of the angular size of the shadow for an arbitrary spherically symmetric and static space-time, which allows one to calculate the shadow for an observer at arbitrary distance from the cent…
