arXiv subjects

Pedro V. P. Cunha

Publications and source records attributed to Pedro V. P. Cunha.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Two shadows of a single black hole: Vacuum birefringence phenomena within Einstein-nonlinear-electrodynamics

One of the main features of nonlinear electrodynamics is the existence of an effective geometry that describes the geodesic motion of photons. A detailed analysis of the properties of effective geometry is of utmost importance for a better understanding of nonlinear electrodynamics theories and their possible imprints on physics, especially in the context of black holes. We consider a nonlinear electrodynamics model that depends on the two electromagnetic scalar invariants and obtain that the motion of photons in nonlinear electrodynamics exhibits \textit{vacuum birefringence}, i.e., photons can propagate along two distinct paths, depending on their polarization. As a consequence of this phenomenon, we show that static black hole solutions sourced by nonlinear electrodynamics can admit two distinct unstable light rings, leading to the formation of two distinct shadows. Moreover, to explore the potential astrophysical relevance of our results, we also compare them with the astrophysical observations for the shadow radius of Sagittarius A*. We place upper limits on the charge-to-mass ratio of the nonlinear electrodynamics-sourced black hole. We also show that the motion of photons in this context can be interpreted as nongeodesic curves subjected to a four-force term from the perspective of an observer in the spacetime metric, generalizing previous results in the literature for nonlinear electrodynamics models that depend on a single electromagnetic scalar invariant.

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arXiv2025

Light rings on stationary axisymmetric spacetimes: blind to the topology and able to coexist

It has been established that Black Hole (BH) spacetimes obeying some general set of assumptions always possess, at least, one light ring (per rotation sense) [arXiv:2003.06445]. This theorem was originally established for asymptotically flat, stationary, axial symmetric, 1+3 dimensional circular spacetimes harbouring a non-extremal and topologically spherical Killing horizon. Following the mantra that a theorem is only as strong as its assumptions in this work we extend this theorem to non topologically spherical (toroidal) BHs and to spacetimes harbouring more than one BH. As in [arXiv:2003.06445], we show that each BH still contributes with, at least, one LR (per rotation sense).

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arXiv2025

Good tachyons, bad bradyons: role reversal in Einstein-nonlinear-electrodynamics models

In relativistic mechanics, the 4-velocity and the 4-momentum need not be parallel. This allows their norm to have a different sign. This possibility occurs in nonlinear electrodynamics (NED) models minimally coupled to Einstein's theory. Surprisingly, for a large class of NED models with a Maxwell limit, for weak fields, the causal (acausal) photons, as determined by their 4-velocity, have a spacelike (timelike) 4-momentum, leading to good tachyons and bad bradyons. Departing from weak fields, this possibility is determined solely by the concavity of the NED Lagrangian, which is consistent with the Dominant Energy Condition analysis. As a corollary, some popular regular black hole solutions sourced by NED, such as the Bardeen and Hayward solutions, are acausal.

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arXiv2025

Backreaction of perturbations around a stable Light Ring

Light rings (LRs) - closed circular orbits of null geodesics - are key features of both black holes and horizonless ultracompact objects. While unstable LRs are relevant for the observation of black hole images, stable LRs have been suspected to trigger instabilities, namely in exotic compact objects that could mimic black holes. The underlying mechanism behind this instability remains poorly understood, but a key missing piece is how the backreaction of a perturbation around the stable LR modifies the surrounding spacetime. In this work, some progress in this direction is provided by examining a conceptually simple, yet instructive, toy model: continuum-shell stars, supported solely by tangential pressures. Using both analytical and numerical methods, we show how perturbations around the stable LR deepen the geodesic potential and shifts its location inward, potentially amplifying any instability associated with the LR. By then extending the analysis to more general stars with nonzero radial pressure, we find that the same phenomenon can be expected to persist under reasonable assumptions.

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arXiv2024

Breaking the north-south symmetry: dyonic spinning black holes with synchronized gauged scalar hair

We study stationary clouds of a gauged, complex scalar field on a magnetically (and possibly electrically as well) charged Kerr-Newman black hole (BH). The existence of a magnetic charge $Q_m$ promotes a north-south $\textit{asymmetry}$ of the scalar clouds. This breakdown of the clouds' $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetry carries through to the spacetime $\textit{geometry}$ for the non-linear continuation of the clouds: a family of magnetically charged (or dyonic) BHs with synchronized gauged scalar hair, which we construct. Their distinct phenomenology is illustrated by their imaging, exhibiting skewed shadows and lensing. Such hairy BHs could, in principle, result from the superradiant instability of magnetically charged Kerr-Newman BHs, unveiling a dynamical mechanism for creating north-south asymmetric BHs from standard $\mathbb{Z}_2$-symmetric electrovacuum BHs.

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arXiv2024

Hypershadows of higher dimensional black objects: a case study of cohomogeneity-one d=5 Myers-Perry

What does a black hole look like? In 1+3 spacetime dimensions, the optical appearance of a black hole is a bidimensional region in the observer's sky often called the black hole shadow, as supported by the EHT observations. In higher dimensions this question is more subtle and observational setup dependent. Previous studies considered the shadows of higher dimensional black holes to remain bidimensional. We argue that the latter should be regarded as a tomography of a higher dimensional structure, the hypershadow, which would be the structure "seen" by higher dimensional observers. As a case study we consider the cohomogeneity-one Myers-Perry black hole in 1+4 dimensions, and compute its tridimensional hypershadow.

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arXiv2024

Analytical proxy to families of numerical solutions: the case study of spherical mini-boson stars

The Einstein field equations, or generalizations thereof, are difficult to solve analytically. On the other hand, numerical solutions of the same equations have become increasingly common, in particular concerning compact objects. Whereas analytic approximations to each individual solution within a numerical family have been proposed, proxies for whole families are missing, which can facilitate studying properties across the parameter space, data compression and a wider usage of such solutions. In this work we tackle this need, proposing a simple strategy based on two different expansions of the unknown functions in an appropriately chosen basis, to build such proxy. We use as an exploratory case-study spherical, fundamental mini-boson stars, to illustrate the feasibility of such an approach, emphasise its advantage in reducing the data size, and the challenges, say, in covering large parameter spaces.

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arXiv2024

The imitation game reloaded: effective shadows of dynamically robust spinning Proca stars

We analyse the lensing images by dynamically robust rotating (mini-)Proca stars surrounded by thin accretion disks. Due to their peculiar geodesic structure we show that these images exhibit striking similarities with the ones of BHs, for appropriately chosen disk intensity profile, when imposing a GRMHD-motivated emission cut off. Additionally, and unlike the non-rotating case, these similarities prevail even when considering equatorial observations. This example illustrates how a horizonless compact object without light rings, with a plausible formation mechanism and dynamically robust, could mimic detailed features of black hole imagiology.

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arXiv2023

Fundamental Physics Opportunities with the Next-Generation Event Horizon Telescope

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration recently published the first images of the supermassive black holes in the cores of the Messier 87 and Milky Way galaxies. These observations have provided a new means to study supermassive black holes and probe physical processes occurring in the strong-field regime. We review the prospects of future observations and theoretical studies of supermassive black hole systems with the next-generation Event Horizon Telescope (ngEHT), which will greatly enhance the capabilities of the existing EHT array. These enhancements will open up several previously inaccessible avenues of investigation, thereby providing important new insights into the properties of supermassive black holes and their environments. This review describes the current state of knowledge for five key science cases, summarising the unique challenges and opportunities for fundamental physics investigations that the ngEHT will enable.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Electrically charged regular black holes in nonlinear electrodynamics: light rings, shadows and gravitational lensing

Within nonlinear electrodynamics (NED), photons follow null geodesics of an effective geometry, which is different from the geometry of the spacetime itself. Over the last years, several works were dedicated to investigate the motion of photons in the effective geometry of NED-based magnetically charged regular black hole (RBH) solutions. However, there are few works considering electrically charged RBHs. We study the light rings, shadows, and gravitational lensing of the electrically charged RBH solution proposed by Irina Dymnikova (ID), which is a static and spherically symmetric spacetime with a NED source. We show that the shadow associated to the effective geometry can be almost 10% bigger that the one associated to the standard geometry. We also find that the ID solution may mimic the shadow properties of the Reissner-Nordström (RN) BH, for low-to-extreme values of the electric charge. Besides that, by using the backwards ray-tracing technique, we obtain that ID and RN BH solutions can have a very similar gravitational lensing, for some values of the correspondent electric charges. We also show that the motion of photons in the effective geometry can be interpreted as a non-geodesic curve submitted to a 4-force term, from the perspective of an observer in the standard geometry.

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arXiv2023

Exotic Compact Objects and the Fate of the Light-Ring Instability

Ultracompact objects with light-rings (LRs) but without an event horizon could mimic black holes (BHs) in their strong gravity phenomenology. But are such objects dynamically viable? Stationary and axisymmetric ultracompact objects that can form from smooth, quasi-Minkowski initial data must have at least one stable LR, which has been argued to trigger a spacetime instability; but its development and fate have been unknown. Using fully non-linear numerical evolutions of ultracompact bosonic stars free of any other known instabilities and introducing a novel adiabatic effective potential technique, we confirm the LRs triggered instability, identifying two possible fates: migration to non-ultracompact configurations or collapse to BHs. In concrete examples we show that typical migration/collapse time scales are not larger than $\sim 10^3$ light-crossing times, unless the stable LR potential well is very shallow. Our results show that the LR instability is effective in destroying horizonless ultracompact objects that could be plausible BH imitators.

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arXiv2022

Kerr black holes with synchronised Proca hair: lensing, shadows and EHT constraints

We investigate the gravitational lensing by spinning Proca stars and the shadows and lensing by Kerr black holes (BHs) with synchronised Proca hair, discussing both theoretical aspects and observational constraints from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) M87* and Sgr A* data. On the theoretical side, this family of BHs interpolates between Kerr-like solutions -- exhibiting a similar optical appearance to that of Kerr BHs -- to very non-Kerr like solutions, exhibiting exotic features such as cuspy shadows, egg-like shadows and ghost shadows. We interpret these features in terms of the structure of the fundamental photon orbits, for which different branches exist, containing both stable and unstable orbits, with some of the latter not being shadow related. On the observational side, we show that current EHT constraints are compatible with all such BHs that could form from the growth of the superradiant instability of Kerr BHs. Unexpectedly, given the (roughly) 10% error bars in the EHT data -- and in contrast to their scalar cousin model --, some of the BHs with up to 40% of their energy in their Proca hair are compatible with the current data. We estimate the necessary resolution of future observations to better constrain this model.

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arXiv2022

Null and timelike circular orbits from equivalent 2D metrics

The motion of particles on spherical $1 + 3$ dimensional spacetimes can, under some assumptions, be described by the curves on a 2-dimensional manifold, the optical and Jacobi manifolds for null and timelike curves, respectively. In this paper we resort to auxiliary 2-dimensional metrics to study circular geodesics of generic static, spherically symmetric, and asymptotically flat $1 + 3$ dimensional spacetimes, whose functions are at least $C^2$ smooth. This is done by studying the Gaussian curvature of the bidimensional equivalent manifold as well as the geodesic curvature of circular paths on these. This study considers both null and timelike circular geodesics. The study of null geodesics through the optical manifold retrieves the known result of the number of light rings (LRs) on the spacetime outside a black hole and on spacetimes with horizonless compact objects. With an equivalent procedure we can formulate a similar theorem on the number of marginally stable timelike circular orbits (TCOs) of a given spacetime satisfying the previously mentioned assumption

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arXiv2021

Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton neutral black holes in strong magnetic fields: topological charge, shadows and lensing

The light rings (LRs) topological charge (TC) of a spacetime measures the number of stable LRs minus the number of unstable LRs. It is invariant under smooth spacetime deformations obeying fixed boundary conditions. Asymptotically flat equilibrium black holes (BHs) have, generically, TC=$-1$. In Einstein-Maxwell theory, however, the Schwarzschild-Melvin BH - describing a neutral BH immersed in a strong magnetic field - has TC$=0$. This allows the existence of BHs without LRs and produces remarkable phenomenological features, like panoramic shadows. Here we investigate the generalised Schwarzschild-Melvin solution in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory, scanning the effect of the dilaton coupling $a$. We find that the TC changes discontinuously from TC$=0$ to TC$=-1$ precisely at the Kaluza-Klein value $a=\sqrt{3}$, when the (empty) Melvin solution corresponds to a twisted Kaluza-Klein reduction of five-dimensional flat spacetime, $i.e.$ the dilaton coupling $a$ induces a topological transition in the TC. We relate this qualitative change to the Melvin asymptotics for different $a$. We also study the shadows and lensing of the generalised Schwarzschild-Melvin solution for different values of $a$, relating them to the TC.

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arXiv2021

Shadows and lensing of black holes immersed in strong magnetic fields

We investigate the null geodesic flow and in particular the light rings (LRs), fundamental photon orbits (FPOs) and shadows of a black hole (BH) immersed in a strong, uniform magnetic field, described by the Schwarzschilld-Melvin electrovacuum solution. The empty Melvin magnetic Universe contains a tube of planar LRs. Including a BH, for weak magnetic fields, the shadow becomes oblate, whereas the intrinsic horizon geometry becomes prolate. For strong magnetic fields (over-critical solutions), there are no LRs outside the BH horizon, a result explained using topological arguments. This feature, together with the light confining structure of the Melvin Universe yields \textit{panoramic shadows}, seen (almost) all around the equator of the observer's sky. Despite the lack of LRs, there are FPOs, including polar planar ones, which define the shadow edge. We also observe and discuss chaotic lensing, including in the empty Melvin Universe, and multiple disconnected shadows.

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arXiv2021

Can different black holes cast the same shadow?

We consider the following question: may two different black holes (BHs) cast exactly the same shadow? In spherical symmetry, we show the necessary and sufficient condition for a static BH to be shadow-degenerate with Schwarzschild is that the dominant photonsphere of both has the same impact parameter, when corrected for the (potentially) different redshift of comparable observers in the different spacetimes. Such shadow-degenerate geometries are classified into two classes. The first shadow-equivalent class contains metrics whose constant (areal) radius hypersurfaces are isometric to those of the Schwarzschild geometry, which is illustrated by the Simpson and Visser (SV) metric. The second shadow-degenerate class contains spacetimes with different redshift profiles and an explicit family of metrics within this class is presented. In the stationary, axi-symmetric case, we determine a sufficient condition for the metric to be shadow degenerate with Kerr for far-away observers. Again we provide two classes of examples. The first class contains metrics whose constant (Boyer-Lindquist-like) radius hypersurfaces are isometric to those of the Kerr geometry, which is illustrated by a rotating generalization of the SV metric, obtained by a modified Newman-Janis algorithm. The second class of examples pertains BHs that fail to have the standard north-south $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, but nonetheless remain shadow degenerate with Kerr. The latter provides a sharp illustration that the shadow is not a probe of the horizon geometry. These examples illustrate that nonisometric BH spacetimes can cast the same shadow, albeit the lensing is generically different.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

The imitation game: Proca stars that can mimic the Schwarzschild shadow

Can a dynamically robust bosonic star (BS) produce an (effective) shadow that mimics that of a black hole (BH)? The BH shadow is linked to the existence of light rings (LRs). For free bosonic fields, yielding mini-BSs, it is known that these stars can become ultra-compact - i.e., possess LRs - but only for perturbatively unstable solutions. We show this remains the case even when different self-interactions are considered. However, an effective shadow can arise in a different way: if BSs reproduce the existence of an innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) for timelike geodesics (located at $r_{\rm ISCO}=6M$ for a Schwarzschild BH of mass M), the accretion flow morphology around BHs is mimicked and an effective shadow arises in an astrophysical environment. Even though spherical BSs may accommodate stable timelike circular orbits all the way down to their centre, we show the angular velocity along such orbits may have a maximum away from the origin, at $R_Ω$; this scale was recently observed to mimic the BH's ISCO in some scenarios of accretion flow. Then: (i) for free scalar fields or with quartic self-interactions, $R_Ω\neq 0$ only for perturbatively unstable BSs; (ii) for higher scalar self-interactions, e.g. axionic, $R_Ω\neq 0$ is possible for perturbatively stable BSs, but no solution with $R_Ω=6M$ was found in the parameter space explored; (iii) but for free vector fields, yielding Proca stars (PSs), perturbatively stable solutions with $R_Ω\neq 0$ exist, and indeed $R_Ω=6M$ for a particular solution. Thus, dynamically robust spherical PSs can mimic the shadow of a (near-)equilibrium Schwarzschild BH with the same M, in an astrophysical environment, despite the absence of a LR, at least under some observation conditions, as we confirm by comparing the lensing of such PSs and Schwarzschild BHs.

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arXiv2020

Shadows of charged rotating black holes: Kerr-Newman versus Kerr-Sen

Celebrating the centennial of its first experimental test, the theory of General Relativity (GR) has successfully and consistently passed all subsequent tests with flying colours. It is expected, however, that at certain scales new physics, in particular in the form of quantum corrections, will emerge, changing some of the predictions of GR, which is a classical theory. In this respect, black holes (BHs) are natural configurations to explore the quantum effects on strong gravitational fields. BH solutions in the low-energy effective field theory description of the heterotic string theory, which is one of the leading candidates to describe quantum gravity, have been the focus of many studies in the last three decades. The recent interest in strong gravitational lensing by BHs, in the wake of the Event Horizon Telescope observations, suggests comparing the BH lensing in both GR and heterotic string theory, in order to assess the phenomenological differences between these models. In this work, we investigate the differences in the shadows of two charged BH solutions with rotation: one arising in the context of GR, namely the Kerr-Newman solution, and the other within the context of low-energy heterotic string theory, the Kerr-Sen solution. We show and interpret, in particular, that the stringy BH always has a larger shadow, for the same physical parameters and observation conditions.

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