Weighing black holes in the universe

The determination of the mass of black holes in our universe is crucial to understand their physics nature but is a great challenge to scientists. In this paper I briefly review some methods that are currently used to estimate the mass of black holes, especially those in X-ray binary systems and in galactic nuclei. Our recent progress in improving the mass estimates of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei by involving some empirical relations is presented. Finally I point out the similarities and common physics in Galactic black hole X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei, and demonstrate that the black hole mass estimation is very much helpful to understand the accretion physics around black holes.     

超亮X射线源与中等质量黑洞

超亮X射线源是在邻近星系中发现的一类特殊的辐射X射线的天体.它们类似银河系中的黑洞双星,但却具有更高的亮度,因此可能包含更高质量的黑洞,即所谓的中等质量黑洞.中等质量黑洞并不像恒星级质量黑洞一样,可以是大质量恒星演化末期核塌缩的产物,因此在天体物理中具有重要意义.文章描述了超亮X射线源的一些基本性质,综述了近年来对这些源多波段观测的重要结果,以及这些结果对这些天体本质的暗示.     

Cosmological black holes: A black hole in the Einstein-de Sitter universe

As an example of a dynamical cosmological black hole, a spacetime that describes an expanding black hole in the asymptotic background of the Einstein-de Sitter universe is constructed. The black hole is primordial in the sense that it forms ab initio with the big bang singularity and its expanding event horizon is represented by a conformal Killing horizon. The metric representing the black hole spacetime is obtained by applying a time dependent conformal transformation on the Schwarzschild metric, such that the result is an exact solution with a matter content described by a two-fluid source. Physical quantities such as the surface gravity and other effects like perihelion precession, light bending and circular orbits are studied in this spacetime and compared to their counterparts in the gravitational field of the isolated Schwarzschild black hole. No changes in the structure of null geodesics are recorded, but significant differences are obtained for timelike geodesics, particularly an increase in the perihelion precession and the non-existence of circular timelike orbits. The solution is expressed in the Newman-Penrose formalism.     

Extreme gravitational lensing in vicinity of Schwarzschild-de Sitter black holes

We have developed a realistic, fully general relativistic computer code to simulate optical projection in a strong, spherically symmetric gravitational field. The standard theoretical analysis of optical projection for an observer in the vicinity of a Schwarzschild black hole is extended to black hole spacetimes with a repulsive cosmological constant, i.e, Schwarzschild-de Sitterspacetimes. Influence of the cosmological constant is investigated for static observers and observers radially free-falling from the static radius. Simulations include effects of the gravitational lensing, multiple images, Doppler and gravitational frequency shift, as well as the intensity amplification. The code generates images of the sky for the static observer and a movie simulations of the changing sky for the radially free-falling observer. Techniques of parallel programming are applied to get a high performance and a fast run of the BHC simulation code.      

黑洞照亮宇宙——银河系中心黑洞及其物理意义

2020年度诺贝尔物理学奖颁发给为黑洞和超大质量致密天体做出突出贡献的三位科学家,他们分别从理论和观测上提供了令人信服的证明和证据。他们的工作打开了理解宇宙中大质量天体命运的窗口。人们普遍相信超大质量黑洞存在于每一个星系的中心,是这些黑洞照亮了再电离时期的宇宙,也是它们为揭开宇宙膨胀历史、暗能量宇宙演化性质、纳赫兹低频引力波等诸多谜团提供了十分强大的工具。预计未来5年内,反响映射和GRAVITY/VLTI联合观测将在以黑洞研究为支撑的领域取得重大进展。     

临界中性Gauss-Bonnet-anti-de Sitter黑洞复杂度演化

利用Fan和Liang(Fan Z Y,Liang H Z 2019 Phys.Rev.D 100086016)研究一般高阶导数引力复杂度的方法,对临界中性Gauss-Bonnet-anti-de Sitter(Gauss-Bonnet-anti-de Sitter,AdS)黑洞的复杂度演化进行研究,并且将研究结果和一般中性Gauss-Bonnet-AdS黑洞的结果进行了比较.研究发现,二者的复杂度演化的整体规律是一致的,它们的主要区别在无量纲的临界时间上.对于五维的临界中性Gauss-Bonnet-AdS黑洞,当黑洞视界面为平面或者球面时,不同大小的黑洞的无量纲的临界时间相同,都取到了最小值.当维度超过五维时,不同大小的球对称临界中性Gauss-Bonnet-AdS黑洞的无量纲临界时间的差异明显要比一般的情况小.这些差异很可能和中性Gauss-Bonnet-AdS黑洞的临界性有关.     

Hamiltonian evolution and quantization for extremal black holes

We present and contrast two distinct ways of including extremal black holes in a Lorentzian Hamiltonian quantization of spherically symmetric Einstein-Maxwell theory. First, we formulate the classical Hamiltonian dynamics with boundary conditions appropriate for extremal black holes only. The Hamiltonian contains no surface term at the internal infinity, for reasons related to the vanishing of the extremal hole surface gravity, and quantization yields a vanishing black hole entropy. Second, we give a Hamiltonian quantization that incorporates extremal black holes as a limiting case of nonextremal ones, and examine the classical limit in terms of wave packets. The spreading of the packets, even the ones centered about extremal black holes, is consistent with continuity of the entropy in the extremal limit, and thus with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy even for the extremal holes. The discussion takes place throughout within Lorentz-signature spacetimes.     

黑洞喷流研究进展

黑洞喷流是黑洞吸积系统中广泛存在的、非常壮观的天文现象。它的形成问题一直是高能天体物理中非常重要同时也是非常困难的研究课题。近年来,主要由于大型计算机数值模拟的快速发展以及观测数据的积累,这一研究领域取得了快速发展。本文将介绍这方面的进展。     

黑洞喷流研究进展

黑洞喷流是黑洞吸积系统中广泛存在的、非常壮观的天文现象。它的形成问题一直是高能天体物理中非常重要同时也是非常困难的研究课题。近年来,主要由于大型计算机数值模拟的快速发展以及观测数据的积累,这一研究领域取得了快速发展。文章将介绍这方面的进展。     

Effect of vacuum energy on evolution of primordial black holes in Einstein gravity

We study the evolution of primordial black holes by considering present universe is no more matter dominated rather vacuum energy dominated. We also consider the accretion of radiation, matter and vacuum energy during respective dominance period. In this scenario, we found that radiation accretion efficiency should be less than 0.366 and accretion rate is much larger than previous analysis by Nayak et al. (2009) [1]. Thus here primordial black holes live longer than previous works Nayak and Singh (2011) [1]. Again matter accretion slightly increases the mass and lifetime of primordial black holes. However, the vacuum energy accretion is slightly complicated one, where accretion is possible only up to a critical time. If a primordial black hole lives beyond critical time, then its? lifespan increases due to vacuum energy accretion. But for presently evaporating primordial black holes, critical time comes much later than their evaporating time and thus vacuum energy could not affect those primordial black holes.     

Thermodynamic instability of 3D Einstein-Born-Infeld AdS black holes

Super-entropic black holes possess finite-area but noncompact event horizons and violate the reverse isoperimetric inequality. It has been conjectured that such black holes always have negative specific heat at constant volume \begin{document}$ C_{V} $\end{document} or negative specific heat at constant pressure \begin{document}$ C_{P} $\end{document} whenever \begin{document}$ C_{V}>0 $\end{document}, making them unstable in extended thermodynamics. In this paper, we describe a test of this instability conjecture with a family of nonlinear electrodynamic black holes, namely 3D Einstein-Born-Infeld (EBI) AdS black holes. Our results show that when nonlinear electrodynamics effects are weak, the instability conjecture is valid. However, the conjecture can be violated in some parameter region when nonlinear electrodynamics effects are strong enough. This observation thus provides a counter example to the instability conjecture, which suggests that super-entropic black holes may be thermodynamically stable.     

Active galactic nuclei at gamma-ray energies

Active Galactic Nuclei can be copious extragalactic emitters of MeV–GeV–TeV γ rays, a phenomenon linked to the presence of relativistic jets powered by a super-massive black hole in the center of the host galaxy. Most of γ-ray emitting active galactic nuclei, with more than 1500 known at GeV energies, and more than 60 at TeV energies, are called “blazars”. The standard blazar paradigm features a jet of relativistic magnetized plasma ejected from the neighborhood of a spinning and accreting super-massive black hole, close to the observer direction. Two classes of blazars are distinguished from observations: the flat-spectrum radio-quasar class (FSRQ) is characterized by strong external radiation fields, emission of broad optical lines, and dust tori. The BL Lac class (from the name of one of its members, BL Lacertae) corresponds to weaker advection-dominated flows with γ-ray spectra dominated by the inverse Compton effect on synchrotron photons. This paradigm has been very successful for modeling the broadband spectral energy distributions of blazars. However, many fundamental issues remain, including the role of hadronic processes and the rapid variability of a few FSRQs and several BL Lac objects whose synchrotron spectrum peaks at UV or X-ray frequencies. A class of γ-ray-emitting radio galaxies, which are thought to be the misaligned counterparts of blazars, has emerged from the results of the Fermi-Large Area Telescope and of ground-based Cherenkov telescopes. Soft γ-ray emission has been detected from a few nearby Seyfert galaxies, though it is not clear whether those γ rays originate from the nucleus. Blazars and their misaligned counterparts make up most of the ≳100 MeV extragalactic γ-ray background (EGB), and are suspected of being the sources of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. The future “Cherenkov Telescope Array”, in synergy with the Fermi-Large Area Telescope and a wide range of telescopes in space and on the ground, will write the next chapter of blazar physics.     

Regular black holes with improved energy conditions and their analogues in fluids

On the premise of the importance of energy conditions for regular black holes, we propose a method to remedy those models that break the dominant energy condition, e.g., the Bardeen and Hayward black holes. We modify the metrics but ensure their regularity at the same time, so that the weak, null, and dominant energy conditions are satisfied, with the exception of the strong energy condition. Likewise, we prove a no-go theorem for conformally related regular black holes, which states that the four energy conditions can never be met in this class of black holes. In order to seek evidences for distinguishing regular black holes from singular black holes, we resort to analogue gravity and regard it as a tool to mimic realistic regular black holes in a fluid. The equations of state for the fluid are solved via an asymptotic analysis associated with a numerical method, which provides a modus operandi for experimental observations, in particular, the conditions under which one can simulate realistic regular black holes in the fluid.     

Area spectrum of slowly rotating black holes

We investigate the area spectrum for rotating black holes which are Kerr and BTZ black holes. For slowly rotating black holes, we use the Maggiore's idea combined with Kunstatter's method to derive their area spectra, which are equally spaced.     

Nonthermal effect of dilatonic black holes

The quantum nonthermal effect of the spherically symmetric and rotating dilatonic black holes is studied. A crossing of the positive and negative Dirac energy of particles occurs near dilatonic black holes. We find that the dilaton coupling parameter α affects the energy of spontaneous radiant particles. The energy of particles decreases when the coupling parameter α increases.     

Scattering of massless fermions by Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrm black holes

We study the scattering of massless Dirac fermions by Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstrm black holes. This is done by applying partial wave analysis to the scattering modes obtained after solving the massless Dirac equation in the asymptotic regions of the two black hole geometries. We successfully obtain analytic phase shifts, with the help of which the scattering cross section is computed. The glory and spiral scattering phenomena are shown to be present, as in the case of massive fermion scattering by black holes.     

Entropy of three-dimensional BTZ black holes

~~Entropy of three-dimensional BTZ black holes~~     

Energy and angular momentum of charged rotating black holes

We show that the pseudotensors of Einstein, Tolman, Landau and Lifshitz, Papapetrou, and Weinberg essentially coincide for any Kerr-Schild metric if calculations are carried out in Kerr-Schild Cartesian coordinates. This generalizes a previous result by Gürses and Gürsey that dealt only with the pseudotensors of Einstein and Landau-Lifshitz. We compute exactly the energy and angular momentum distributions for the Kerr-Newman metric in Kerr-Schild Cartesian coordinates and compare the results with those obtained by using different definitions of quasilocal mass, which unlike pseudotensors do not agree for all Kerr-Schild metrics.