No Arabic abstract
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 center. Then we discuss the calculation of the shadow of a Kerr black hole, for an observer anywhere outside of the black hole. For observers at large distances we present and compare two methods used in the literature. Special attention is given to calculating the shadow in space-times which are not asymptotically flat. Shadows of wormholes and other black-hole impostors are reviewed. Then we discuss the calculation of the black hole shadow in an expanding universe as seen by a comoving observer. The influence of a plasma on the shadow of a black hole is also considered.
Causal concept for the general black hole shadow is investigated, instead of the photon sphere. We define several `wandering null geodesics as complete null geodesics accompanied by repetitive conjugate points, which would correspond to null geodesics on the photon sphere in Schwarzschild spacetime. We also define a `wandering set, that is, a set of totally wandering null geodesics as a counterpart of the photon sphere, and moreover, a truncated wandering null geodesic to symbolically discuss its formation. Then we examine the existence of a wandering null geodesic in general black hole spacetimes mainly in terms of Weyl focusing. We will see the essence of the black hole shadow is not the stationary cycling of the photon orbits which is the concept only available in a stationary spacetime, but their accumulation. A wandering null geodesic implies that this accumulation will be occur somewhere in an asymptotically flat spacetime.
In General Relativity, the spacetimes of black holes have three fundamental properties: (i) they are the same, to lowest order in spin, as the metrics of stellar objects; (ii) they are independent of mass, when expressed in geometric units; and (iii) they are described by the Kerr metric. In this paper, we quantify the upper bounds on potential black-hole metric deviations imposed by observations of black-hole shadows and of binary black-hole inspirals in order to explore the current experimental limits on possible violations of the last two predictions. We find that both types of experiments provide correlated constraints on deviation parameters that are primarily in the tt-components of the spacetimes, when expressed in areal coordinates. We conclude that, currently, there is no evidence for a deviations from the Kerr metric across the 8 orders of magnitudes in masses and 16 orders in curvatures spanned by the two types of black holes. Moreover, because of the particular masses of black holes in the current sample of gravitational-wave sources, the correlations imposed by the two experiments are aligned and of similar magnitudes when expressed in terms of the far field, post-Newtonian predictions of the metrics. If a future coalescing black-hole binary with two low-mass (e.g., ~3 Msun) components is discovered, the degeneracy between the deviation parameters can be broken by combining the inspiral constraints with those from the black-hole shadow measurements.
We investigate the relationship between shadow radius and microstructure for a general static spherically symmetric black hole and confirm their close connection. In this regard, we take the Reissner-Nordstrom (AdS) black hole as an example to do the concrete analysis. On the other hand, we study for the Kerr (AdS) black hole the relationship between its shadow and thermodynamics in the aspects of phase transition and microstructure. Our results for the Kerr (AdS) black hole show that the shadow radius $r_{rm sh}$, the deformation parameters $delta _{s}$ and $k_{s}$, and the circularity deviation $Delta C$ can reflect the black hole thermodynamics. In addition, we give the constraints to the relaxation time of the M$87^{*}$ black hole by combining its shadow data and the Bekenstein-Hod universal bounds when the M$87^{*}$ is regarded as the Reissner-Nordstrom or Kerr black hole. Especially, we obtain the formula of the minimum relaxation time $tau _{rm min}$ which equals $8GM/c^3$ for a fixed black hole mass $M$, and predict that the minimum relaxation times of M$87^{*}$ black hole and Sgr $A^{*}$ black hole are approximately 3 days and 2.64 minutes, respectively. Finally, we draw the first graph of the minimum relaxation time $tau _{rm min}$ with respect to the maximum shadow radius $ r_{rm sh}^{rm max}$ at different mass levels.
We review aspects of the thermodynamics of black holes and in particular take into account the fact that the quantum entanglement between the degrees of freedom of a scalar field, traced inside the event horizon, can be the origin of black hole entropy. The main reason behind such a plausibility is that the well-known Bekenstein-Hawking entropy-area proportionality -- the so-called `area law of black hole physics -- holds for entanglement entropy as well, provided the scalar field is in its ground state, or in other minimum uncertainty states, such as a generic coherent state or squeezed state. However, when the field is either in an excited state or in a state which is a superposition of ground and excited states, a power-law correction to the area law is shown to exist. Such a correction term falls off with increasing area, so that eventually the area law is recovered for large enough horizon area. On ascertaining the location of the microscopic degrees of freedom that lead to the entanglement entropy of black holes, it is found that although the degrees of freedom close to the horizon contribute most to the total entropy, the contributions from those that are far from the horizon are more significant for excited/superposed states than for the ground state. Thus, the deviations from the area law for excited/superposed states may, in a way, be attributed to the far-away degrees of freedom. Finally, taking the scalar field (which is traced over) to be massive, we explore the changes on the area law due to the mass. Although most of our computations are done in flat space-time with a hypothetical spherical region, considered to be the analogue of the horizon, we show that our results hold as well in curved space-times representing static asymptotically flat spherical black holes with single horizon.
Cosmic expansion influences the angular size of black hole shadow. The most general way to describe a black hole embedded into an expanding universe is to use the McVittie metric. So far, the exact analytical solution for the shadow size in the McVittie metric, valid for arbitrary law of expansion and arbitrary position of the observer, has not been found. In this paper, we present the first analytical solution for angular size of black hole shadow in McVittie metric as seen by observer comoving with the cosmic expansion. We use a method of matched asymptotic expansions to find approximate solution valid within the entire range of possible positions of observer. As two particular examples, we consider black hole in de Sitter and matter dominated universe.