Thesis

Black hole shadows, the Kerr hypothesis and fundamental physics

• Call:

  PT-CERN call 2020/1

• Academic Year:

  2020/2021

• Domain:

  Astroparticle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Carlos Herdeiro

• Co-Supervisor:

  Pedro Cunha

• Institution:

  Universidade de Aveiro

• Host Institution:

  CIDMA - Centro de Investigação em Matemática e Aplicações da Universidade de Aveiro

• Abstract:

  The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) produced in 2019 the first image of a black hole candidate with resolved horizon scale structure. Imaging the strong gravity region around such compact objects can test the Kerr hypothesis. This hypothesis states that astrophysical black holes are well described by the paradigmatic Kerr solution. In the last few years, new black hole solutions and horizonless compact objects have been proposed considering the interaction with novel ultralight bosonic particles, which can work as a proxy for dark matter. The goal of this project is to study the strong gravitational lensing by this non-Kerr compact objects, using ray tracing codes and General Relativistic Magneto-Hydrodynamic simulations, to obtain images that can be compared with the EHT data. This will constraint models of ultralight bosonic fields and possibly shed new light on the nature of dark matter.