Search

A Gibbons-Maeda-Garfinkle-Horowitz-Strominger (GMGHS) black hole with a magnetic charge (or an electric charge) has noteworthy features that its scalar curvature near the event horizon of the black hole with the almost maximal charge can be extremely large. The large curvature, which is related with the gravity on a finite-sized object or between two points, causes high center-of-mass energy for two neutral particles near the almost maximally charged GMGHS black hole. Recently, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration gave the bound on the charge of black holes from the shadow and mass observations of black holes under an assumption that the diameter of observed rings are proportion to that of photon spheres. The photon sphere would be less related with the curvature, since it is determined by the behavior of one photon or one ray neither two photons nor two rays. Thus, the high-energy neutral particle collision and the black hole shadow observations would be complementary to distinguish the GMGHS black hole from other black hole solutions. In this paper, we investigate a new way to compare the center-of-mass energy for neutral particle collisions in the GMGHS spacetime and other black hole spacetimes. From the shadow observations and the mass observations under the assumptions on the effect of black hole charges, we can put constraints on the center-of-mass energy of the particles. We apply our method to shadow and mass observations of M87* and Sagittarius~A*. We find that the center-of-mass energy of neutral particles near the GMGHS black holes cannot be extremely large under the observational constraints, and conclude that the GMGHS spacetimes are hardly distinguishable from the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m spacetimes by the particle collisions if we apply the shadow and mass observations at $1 \sigma$ probability., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration observed ring images called the shadows of M87* and Sagittarius~A* (Sgr~A*), which are supermassive objects in M87 and our galaxy, respectively, and their general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of black holes imply that the observed rings are formed by the gravitational lensing of synchrotron radiations from a hot plasma near outside of supermassive black holes. The EHT Collaboration gave constrains on the electrical or alternative charges of M87* and Sgr A* under an assumption that the radius of the observed ring should be proportional to the changing rates of photon spheres by the charges. Since the validness of this assumption is not sure, it is worth to checking the same constraints under another assumption. In this paper, we consider the changing rates of not only the photon spheres but also lensing rings in a simple model and we test whether aforementioned constraint is robust. We conclude that EHT Collaboration's constraints based on the changing rates of the photon spheres can be relaxed compared to that based on the changing rate of the lensing rings while we do not claim that the observed rings are formed by the photon spheres and the lensing rings in our simple model. We concentrate on Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole spacetimes in this paper, but our result implies the relaxation of the bound of the charge parameters on other black hole spacetimes., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

A general asymptotically-flat, static, and spherical symmetrical wormhole without a thin shell has at least one unstable circular light orbit at a radius. If the wormhole has $Z_2$ symmetry against the throat, the stable or unstable circular light orbit must be on the throat but this fact is often overlooked. In this study, we categorize the numbers of the circular light orbits of the $Z_2$-symmetrical wormhole and their stability from the derivatives of an effective potential at the throat and we investigate the circular light orbits around a Simpson-Visser black-bounce spacetime, a DamourSolodukhin wormhole spacetime, a Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black-hole-like wormhole spacetime or a charged Damour-Solodukhin wormhole spacetime as examples. We give complete treaments including degenerated circular light orbits made from more than one stable and unstable circular light orbits on and off the throat., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, minor correction

Vagnozzi et al. constrained the additional parameter of spacetimes with a photon sphere from the observation of the shadow of Sagittarius A* under the assumption that a distance to the Sagittarius A* and its mass parameter was estimated from other observations. They claimed that a Damour-Solodukhin wormhole with an additional parameter $\lambda$ is not an asymptotically-flat spacetime and that they gave the first robust observational constraint on the parameter $\lambda$ of the Damour-Solodukhin wormhole. However, they overlooked the fact that: (A) the Damour-Solodukhin wormhole spacetime is asymptotically flat, (B) the throat of the Damour-Solodukhin wormhole works as an effective photon sphere for $\lambda>\sqrt{2}/2$, and (C) not only a usual mass parameter but also the parameter $\lambda$ contributes the mass of the Damour-Solodukhin wormhole. Because of the overlook (C), we realize that their constraint on the parameter $\lambda$ is invalid. This is because their method corresponds to the following way: They estimated the mass parameter from the other observations under the assumption $\lambda=0$ even though the value of the parameter $\lambda$ strongly affects the determination of the mass parameter, and then, they used the value of the mass parameter to constrain $\lambda$ from the observation of the shadow. We conclude that we should constrain the mass parameter and $\lambda$ from the shadow observation and other observations without the assumption $\lambda=0$., Comment: 3 pages, no figure, minor changes, accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity

We cut a general, static, spherically symmetric spacetime and paste its copy to make a wormhole with a thin shell of any barotropic fluid in general relativity. We show that the stability of the thin-shell wormhole is characterized by a set of circular photon orbits called an (anti)photon sphere in the original spacetime if a momentum flux passing through a throat is prohibited. Our result will be useful to classify the stability of the thin shell on the throat against linearized spherically symmetric perturbations., Comment: 8 papes, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

The 0th order of affine perturbation series of the deflection angle of a ray near a photon sphere is more accurate than a deflection angle in a strong deflection limit, which is used often, because the later has hidden error terms. We investigate gravitational lensing by using 0th order affine perturbation series of the deflection angle in a general asymptotically-flat, static, and spherical symmetric spacetime with the photon sphere. We apply our formula to Schwarzschild black hole, Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole, and Ellis-Bronnikov wormhole spacetimes as examples. By comparing observables by using the deflection angles, we show that we can ignore the effect of the hidden error terms in the deflection angle in the strong deflection limit on the observables in a usual lens configuration with the photon sphere since the hidden error terms are tiny. On the other hand, in a retro lensing configuration, the deflection angle in the strong-deflection-limit analysis have error of several percent and the 0th order of affine perturbation series of the deflection angle has almost half of the error. Thus, in the retro lensing configuration, we should use the 0th order of affine perturbation series of the deflection angle rather than the deflection angle in the strong-deflection-limit analysis. The 0th order of affine perturbation series of the deflection angle can give a brighter magnification by a dozen percent than the one by using the deflection angle in the strong-deflection-limit analysis., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, accepted for publication in The European Physical Journal C

We investigate the affine perturbation series of the deflection angle of a ray near the photon sphere of an extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole. We compare the 0th and 1st orders of the affine perturbation series with the deflection angle in a strong deflection limit. We conclude that the 0th order of the affine perturbation series is more accurate than the deflection angle in the strong deflection limit and that we should improve a strong-deflection-limit analysis by using the 0th order of the affine perturbation series., Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We investigate the power of a collisional Penrose process with an unbound energy extraction from an extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole. This process takes infinite time in a time coordinate at a constant radial coordinate outside of the black hole. For black holes as a power plant, the power of the process for an observer far away from the black hole can be useful. We define the power as energy gain from the extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole divided by the time interval of the process in a coordinate time; we estimate the upper bound of the power in a near-horizon limit, while the efficiency of the process can be arbitrary large in that limit. Thus, we conclude that there is no trade-off relation between the efficiency and power in the collisional Penrose process in extreme Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m spacetime., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, minor changes, added references, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We investigate retrolensing by two photon spheres in a novel black-bounce spacetime suggested by Lobo et al. which can correspond to a Schwarzschild black hole, a regular black hole, and a traversable wormhole including an Ellis-Bronnikov wormhole. In a case, the wormhole has a throat which acts as a photon sphere and it has another photon sphere outside of the throat. With the sun as a light source, an observer, and the wormhole are lined up in this order, sunlight reflected slightly outside of the throat and barely outside and inside of the outer photon sphere can reach the observer. We show that the light rays reflected by the outer photon sphere are dominant in retrolensing light curves in the case., Comment: 15 pages, 8 figures, minor changes, changed to one column, added references, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We consider gravitational lensing under a weak-field approximation and in a strong deflection limit by a Bronnikov-Kim wormhole with the same metric as the one of a wormhole which has been suggested in Einstein-Dirac-Maxwell theory. The metric approaches into the metric of an extreme charged Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole in a black hole limit and it becomes the metric of an spatial Schwarzschild wormhole in an ultrastatic limit. In both of the black hole limit and the ultrastatic limit, the coefficient of a divergent term and the constant term of the deflection angle of a light in the strong deflection limit can be obtained exactly without expanding of parameters of the spacetime. Interestingly, in the both limits to the black hole and the ultrastatic wormhole, we obtain exactly the same coefficient and constant term in the strong deflection limit., Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We investigate retrolensing of sunlights reflected by a photon sphere and by a potential barrier near an antiphoton sphere around a Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m naked singularity. We apply the deflection angles of light rays in strong deflection limits to the retrolensing. We show that the retrolensing by the photon sphere around the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m naked singularity can be brighter than the one around a Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole because of the existence of the rays which reflected by the potential barrier., Comment: 9 pages, 10 figures, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We investigate gravitational lensing by a photon sphere in a Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m naked singularity spacetime in strong deflection limits. Because of the nonexistence of an event horizon and the existence of a potential barrier near an antiphoton sphere, infinite numbers of images slightly inside and outside of a photon sphere can appear. We obtain the analytic expressions of the factors of logarithmic divergent terms and the constant terms of the deflection angles in the strong deflection limits not only the for the little outside but also the barely inside of the photon sphere without Taylor expansions in the power of an electric charge. We can distinguish between a Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m black hole spacetime and the naked singularity spacetime since the images little inside of the photon sphere around the naked singularity are significantly brighter than the image barely outside of the photon sphere around the black hole and the naked singularity., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures, calculations are fixed, accepted to be published in Physical Review D

We investigate gravitational lensing by a primary photon sphere which is a sphere filled with unstable circular light orbits, and by a secondary photon sphere on a wormhole throat in a black-bounce spacetime which is suggested in [F. S. N. Lobo, M. E. Rodrigues, M. V. d. S. Silva, A. Simpson, and M. Visser, Phys. Rev. D 103, 084052 (2021)] in strong deflection limits. There is an antiphoton sphere between the primary photon sphere and the secondary photon sphere. If a light source and an observer are on the same side of the wormhole throat, in addition to an infinite number of images slightly outside of both the primary and secondary photon spheres, an infinite number of images formed by light rays reflected by the potential barrier near the antiphoton sphere, slightly inside the primary photon sphere, might be observed., Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, published in Physical Review D, Table I and Fig. 5 corrected, results unchanged

Wormholes are hypothetical objects which can be black hole mimickers with strong gravitational fields. Recently, Wielgus et al. have constructed reflection-asymmetric thin-shell wormholes which are composed of the parts of a Schwarzschild spacetime and a Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime with two photon spheres with different sizes each other in [M. Wielgus, J. Horak, F. Vincent, and M. Abramowicz, Phys. Rev. D 102, 084044 (2020)]. They have discussed observational property of the shadows with two photon rings in different sizes as seen from an observer and they have named their shadows double shadows. In this paper, we study the linearization stability of the reflection-asymmetric thin-shell wormholes with the double shadows., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, minor correction, title changed, references added, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

A Simpson-Visser spacetime has two nonnegative parameters $a$ and $m$ and its metric is correspond with (i) a Schwarzschild metric for $a=0$ and $m\neq0$, (ii) a regular black hole metric for $a<2m$, (iii) a one-way traversable wormhole metric for $a=2m$, (vi) a two-way traversable wormhole metric for $a>2m$, and (v) an Ellis-Bronnikov wormhole metric for $a\neq0$ and $m=0$. The spacetime is one of the most useful spacetimes for the purpose of comprehensively understanding gravitational lensing of light rays reflected by a photon sphere of black holes and wormholes. We have investigated gravitational lensing in the Simpson-Visser spacetime in a strong deflection limit in all the nonnegative parameters of $a$ and $m$. In a case of $a=3m$, two photon spheres and an antiphoton sphere at the throat degenerate into a marginally unstable photon sphere. The deflection angle of the light rays reflected by the marginally unstable photon sphere at the throat diverges nonlogarithmically in the strong deflection limit., Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, minor correction, references added, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We investigate the deflection angle in a strong deflection limit for a marginally unstable photon sphere in a general asymptotically flat, static and spherically symmetric spacetime under some assumptions to calculate observables. The deflection angle of a light ray reflected by the marginally unstable photon sphere diverges nonlogarithmically while the one reflected by a photon sphere diverges logarithmically. We apply our formula to a Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime and Hayward spacetime., Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, minor correction, title changed, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

Static, spherically symmetric black holes and compact objects without an event horizon have unstable (stable) circular orbits of a light called photon (antiphoton) sphere. A Damour-Solodukhin wormhole has been suggested as a simple black hole mimicker and the difference of its metric tensors from a black hole is described by a dimensionless parameter $\lambda$. The wormhole with two flat regions has two photon spheres and an antiphoton sphere for $\lambda<\sqrt{2}/2$ and a photon sphere for $\lambda \geq \sqrt{2}/2$. When the parameter $\lambda$ is $\sqrt{2}/2$, the photon sphere is marginally unstable because of degeneration of the photon spheres and antiphoton sphere. We investigate gravitational lensing by the wormhole in weak and strong gravitational fields. We find that the deflection angle of a light ray reflected by the marginally unstable photon sphere diverges nonlogarithmically in a strong deflection limit for $\lambda=\sqrt{2}/2$, while the deflection angle reflected by the photon sphere diverges logarithmically for $\lambda \neq \sqrt{2}/2$. We extend a strong deflection limit analysis for the nonlogarithmic divergence case. We expect that our method can be applied for gravitational lenses by marginally unstable photon spheres of various compact objects., Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

A Damour-Solodukhin wormhole with a metric which is similar to a Schwarzschild black hole seems to be a black hole mimicker since it is difficult to distinguish them by practical astrophysical observations. In this paper, we investigate a center-of-mass energy for the collision of two test particles in the Damour-Solodukhin wormhole spacetime. We show that the center-of-mass energy for the head-on collision of the particles is large if the difference between the metrics of the wormhole and the black hole is small. To deeply understand the high energy particle collision, we generalize the head-on collision to static, spherically symmetric black-hole-like wormholes., Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure, title changed, minor correction, references added, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We consider a collision of two dust thin shells with a high center-of-mass (CM) energy including their self-gravity in a Ba\~{n}ados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) spacetime. The shells divide the BTZ spacetime into three domains and the domains are matched by the Darmois-Israel junction conditions. We treat only the collision of two shells which corotate with a background BTZ spacetime because of the junction conditions. The counterpart of the corotating shell collision is a collision of two particles with vanishing angular momenta. We compare the dust thin shell collision and the particle collision in order to investigate the effects of the self-gravity of colliding objects on the high CM energy collision. We show that the self-gravity of the shells affects the position of an event horizon and it covers the high-energy collisional event. Therefore, we conclude that the self-gravity of colliding objects suppresses its CM energy and that any observer who stands outside of the event horizon cannot observe the collision with an arbitrary high CM energy., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures

We cut and paste two Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) spacetimes at a throat by the Darmois-Israel method to construct a rotating wormhole with a thin shell filled with a barotropic fluid. The thin shell at the throat and both sides of the throat corotate. We investigate the linear stability of the thin shell of the rotating wormhole against radial perturbations. We show that the wormhole becomes more and more stable the larger its angular momentum is until the angular momentum reaches a critical value and that the behavior of a condition for stability significantly changes when the angular momentum exceeds the critical value. We find that the overcritical rotating wormhole has the radius of the thin shell, which is stable regardless of the equation of state for the barotropic fluid., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, title changed, minor correction, references added, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We can survey an Ellis wormhole which is the simplest Morris-Thorne wormhole in our galaxy with microlensing. The light curve of a point source microlensed by the Ellis wormhole shows approximately $4\%$ demagnification while the total magnification of images lensed by a Schwarzschild lens is always larger than unity. We investigate an extended source effect on the light curves microlensed by the Ellis wormhole. We show that the depth of the gutter of the light curves of an extended source is smaller than the one of a point source since the magnified part of the extended source cancels the demagnified part out. We can, however, distinguish between the light curves of the extended source microlensed by the Ellis wormhole and the ones by the Schwarzschild lens in their shapes even if the size of the source is a few times larger than the size of an Einstein ring on a source plane. If the relative velocity of a star with the radius of $10^6$ km at $8$ kpc in the bulge of our galaxy against an observer-lens system is smaller than $10$ km/s on a source plane, we can detect microlensing of the star lensed by the Ellis wormhole with the throat radius of $1$ km at $4$ kpc., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, minor changes, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

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 of rotating black holes if assumptions are satisfied., Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, the title is changed slightly, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We consider a particle collision with a high center-of-mass energy near a Ba\~nados-Teitelboim-Zanelli (BTZ) black hole. We obtain the center-of-mass energy of two general colliding geodesic particles in the BTZ black hole spacetime. We show that the center-of-mass energy of two ingoing particles can be arbitrarily large on an event horizon if either of the two particles has a critical angular momentum and the other has a non-critical angular momentum. We also show that the motion of a particle with a subcritical angular momentum is allowed near an extremal rotating BTZ black hole and that a center-of-mass energy for a tail-on collision at a point can be arbitrarily large in a critical angular momentum limit., Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

The deflection angle of a light ray can be arbitrarily large near a light sphere. The time-symmetrical shape of light curves of a pair of light rays reflected by a light sphere of a lens object does not depend on the details of the lens object. We consider retrolensing light curves of sunlight with deflection angles $\pi$ and $3\pi$ by an Ellis wormhole, which is the simplest Morris-Thorne wormhole. If an Ellis wormhole with a throat parameter $a=10^{11}$ km is $100$ pc away from an observer and if the Ellis wormhole, the observer, and the sun are aligned perfectly in this order, the apparent magnitudes of a pair of light rays with deflection angles $\pi$ and $3\pi$ become $11$ and $18$, respectively. The two pairs of light rays make a superposed light curve with two separable peaks and they break down time symmetry of a retrolensing light curve. The observation of the two separated peaks of the light curves gives us information on the details of the lens object. If the observer can also separate the pair of the images with the deflection angle $\pi$ into a double image, he or she can say whether the retrolensing is caused by an Ellis wormhole or a Schwarzschild black hole., Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures, title changed, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

Gravitational lensing by the light sphere of compact objects like black holes and wormholes will give us information on the compact objects. In this paper, we provide an improved strong deflection limit analysis in a general asymptotically flat, static, spherically symmetric spacetime. The strong deflection limit analysis also works in ultrastatic spacetimes. As an example of an ultrastatic spacetime, we reexamine the deflection angle in the strong deflection limit in an Ellis wormhole spacetime. Using the strong deflection limit, we obtain the deflection angle analytically for the Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime. The point of the improvement is the definition of a standard variable in the strong deflection limit analysis. We show that the choice of the variable is as important as the choice of the coordinates and we conclude that one should choose a proper variable for a given spacetime., Comment: 20 pages, 1 figure, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

Compact objects with a light sphere such as black holes and wormholes can reflect light rays like a mirror. This gravitational lensing phenomenon is called retrolensing and it is an interesting tool to survey dark and compact objects with a light sphere near the solar system. In this paper, we calculate the deflection angle analytically in the strong deflection limit in the Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime without Taylor expanding it in the power of the electric charge. Using the obtained deflection angle in the strong deflection limit, we investigate the retrolensing light curves and the separation of double images by the light sphere of Reissner-Nordstrom black holes., Comment: 24 pages, 11 figures, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

Observations of gravitational lenses in strong gravitational fields give us a clue to understanding dark compact objects. In this paper, we extend a method to obtain a deflection angle in a strong deflection limit provided by Bozza [Phys. Rev. D 66, 103001 (2002)] to apply to ultrastatic spacetimes. We also discuss on the order of an error term in the deflection angle. Using the improved method, we consider gravitational lensing by an Ellis wormhole, which is an ultrastatic wormhole of the Morris-Thorne class., Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, minor correction, title changed, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

Gravitational lensing is a good probe into the topological structure of dark gravitating celestial objects. In this paper, we investigate the light curve of a light ray that passes through the throat of an Ellis wormhole, the simplest example of traversable wormholes. The method developed here is also applicable to other traversable wormholes. To study whether the light curve of a light ray that passes through a wormhole throat is distinguishable from that which does not, we also calculate light curves without the passage of a throat for an Ellis wormhole, a Schwarzschild black hole, and an ultrastatic wormhole with the spatial geometry identical to that of the Schwarzschild black hole in the following two cases: (i) "microlensing," where the source, lens, and observer are almost aligned in this order and the light ray starts at the source, refracts in the weak gravitational field of the lens with a small deflection angle, and reaches the observer, and (ii) "retrolensing," where the source, observer, and lens are almost aligned in this order, and the light ray starts at the source, refracts in the vicinity of the light sphere of the lens with a deflection angle very close to $\pi$, and reaches the observer. We find that the light curve of the light ray that passes through the throat of the Ellis wormhole is clearly distinguishable from that by the microlensing but not from that by the retrolensing. This is because the light curve of a light ray that passes by a light sphere of a lens with a large deflection angle has common characters, irrespective of the details of the lens object. This implies that the light curves of the light rays that pass through the throat of more general traversable wormholes are qualitatively the same as that of the Ellis wormhole., Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, title changed, minor changes from v2, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We discuss a parametrization to describe possible deviations from the Kerr metric and test astrophysical black hole candidates with electromagnetic radiation. Our metric is a very simple generalization of the Kerr solution with two main properties: $i)$ the phenomenology is quite rich and, for example, it can describe black holes with high Novikov-Thorne radiative efficiency or black holes of very small size; $ii)$ it is suitable for the numerical calculations required to study the spectrum of thin disks. The latter point is our principal motivation to study such a kind of parametrization, because in the analysis of real data there are usually several parameters to fit and the problem with current non-Kerr metrics is that the calculation times are too long., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures. v2: corrected some typos

In a collisional Penrose process, two particles coming from the asymptotically flat region collide in the ergosphere of a compact object. The collision produces two new particles, one with positive energy and one with negative energy. When the particle with positive energy escapes to infinity, the process extracts energy from the compact object. In this paper, we study the collisional Penrose process in a rotating wormhole spacetime. We consider the simple case of a head-on collision at the throat of a Teo wormhole. We find that the process of energy extraction from a Teo wormhole can be substantially more efficient than the collisional Penrose process in the Kerr black hole spacetime., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures. v2: corrected a few typos

We study the collision of two particles in the Teo wormhole spacetime, in which the wormhole is stationary and axisymmetric. We show that a non-rotating Teo wormhole cannot be a particle accelerator, while a rotating Teo wormhole can be used to accelerate particles and create high energy collisions because of the deep effective potential of the colliding particles. The process is different from that in the vicinity of a near-extremal black hole, since here there is no event horizon. This is the first example of particle collision with high center-of-mass energy in a spacetime with no event horizon, no naked singularity, and not being extremal in a clear sense. The process can unlikely have direct implications for astrophysical observations, but it is interesting as a tool to investigate wormhole instabilities., Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure. v2: minor changes

The spin measurement of black holes has important implications in physics and astrophysics. Regardless of the specific technique to estimate the black hole spin, all the current approaches assume that the space-time geometry around the compact object is exactly described by the Kerr solution. This is clearly an approximation, because the Kerr metric is a stationary solution of the vacuum Einstein equations. In this paper, we estimate the effect of a massive accretion disk in the measurement of the black hole spin with a simple analytical model. For typical accretion disks, the mass of the disk is completely negligible, even for future more accurate measurements. However, for systems with very massive disks the effect may not be ignored., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures. v2: corrected a few typos

Within 5-10 years, very-long baseline interferometry (VLBI) facilities will be able to directly image the accretion flow around SgrA$^*$, the super-massive black hole candidate at the center of the Galaxy, and observe the black hole "shadow". In 4-dimensional general relativity, the no-hair theorem asserts that uncharged black holes are described by the Kerr solution and are completely specified by their mass $M$ and by their spin parameter $a$. In this paper, we explore the possibility of distinguishing Kerr and Bardeen black holes from their shadow. In Hioki & Maeda (2009), under the assumption that the background geometry is described by the Kerr solution, the authors proposed an algorithm to estimate the value of $a/M$ by measuring the distortion parameter $\delta$, an observable quantity that characterizes the shape of the shadow. Here, we try to extend their approach. Since the Hioki-Maeda distortion parameter is degenerate with respect to the spin and possible deviations from the Kerr solution, one has to measure another quantity to test the Kerr black hole hypothesis. We study a few possibilities. We find that it is extremely difficult to distinguish Kerr and Bardeen black holes from the sole observation of the shadow, and out of reach for the near future. The combination of the measurement of the shadow with possible accurate radio observations of a pulsar in a compact orbit around SgrA$^*$ could be a more promising strategy to verify the Kerr black hole paradigm., Comment: 1+18 pages, 11 figures. v2: a few typos corrected

The gravitational lensing effects in the weak gravitational field by exotic lenses have been investigated intensively to find nonluminous exotic objects. Gravitational lensing based on 1/r^n fall-off metric, as a one-parameter model that can treat by hand both the Schwarzschild lens (n=1) and the Ellis wormhole (n=2) in the weak field, has been recently studied. Only for n=1 case, however, it has been explicitly shown that effects of relativistic lens images by the strong field on the light curve can be neglected. We discuss whether relativistic images by the strong field can be neglected for n>1 in the Tangherlini spacetime which is one of the simplest models for our purpose. We calculate the divergent part of the deflection angle for arbitrary n and the regular part for n=1, 2 and 4 in the strong field limit, the deflection angle for arbitrary n under the weak gravitational approximation. We also compare the radius of the Einstein ring with the radii of the relativistic Einstein rings for arbitrary n. We conclude that the images in the strong gravitational field have little effect on the total light curve and that the time-symmetric demagnification parts in the light curve will appear even after taking account of the images in the strong gravitational field for n>1., Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, minor correction, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We study high energy particle collisions around the higher dimensional black holes. It is shown that the center of mass energy can be arbitrarily large in the vicinity of the event horizon like the Banados, Silk and West (BSW) process in four dimensions if the following two conditions are satisfied: (i) the horizon is extremal and (ii) the parameters of either of the two colliding particles are fine-tuned, which is called a critical particle condition. We also show that a test particle which satisfies the critical particle condition can reach the event horizon from a distant region for a simple case. Finally, we discuss the relation between the BSW process and the linear instability of test fields around the extremal black holes, the latter of which has been recently found by Aretakis., Comment: 35 pages, 4 figures, minor changes, accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We propose the use of modulated spectra of astronomical sources due to gravitational lensing to probe Ellis wormholes. The modulation factor due to gravitational lensing by the Ellis wormhole is calculated. Within the geometrical optics approximation, the normal point mass lens and the Ellis wormhole are indistinguishable unless we know the source's unlensed luminosity. This degeneracy is resolved with the significant wave effect in the low frequency domain if we take the deviation from the geometrical optics into account. We can roughly estimate the upper bound for the number density of Ellis wormholes as $n\lesssim 10^{-9}\{AU}^{-3}$ with throat radius $a\sim1\cm$ from the existing femto-lensing analysis for compact objects., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures

It is well known that the sum of signed magnifications is invariant for mass lens systems. In this paper, we discuss the signed magnification sums of general spherical lens models including the singular isothermal sphere, the Schwarzschild lens and the Ellis wormhole, the last of which is an example of the traversable wormholes of the Morris-Thorne class. We show that the signed magnication sums are a very useful tool to distinguish exotic lens objects. For example, we show that one can distinguish the Ellis wormholes from the Schwarzschild lens with the signed magnification sums., Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, minor changes from v1

For the last decade, the gravitational lensing in the strong gravitational field has been studied eagerly. It is well known that, for the lensing by a black hole, infinite number of Einstein rings are formed by the light rays which wind around the black hole nearly on the photon sphere, which are called relativistic Einstein rings. This is also the case for the lensing by a wormhole. In this paper, we study the Einstein ring and relativistic Einstein rings for the Schwarzschild black hole and the Ellis wormhole, the latter of which is an example of traversable wormholes of the Morris-Thorne class. Given the configuration of the gravitational lensing and the radii of the Einstein ring and relativistic Einstein rings, we can distinguish between a black hole and a wormhole in principle. We conclude that we can detect the relativistic Einstein rings by wormholes which have the radii of the throat $a\simeq 0.5$pc at a galactic center with the distance 10Mpc and which have $a\simeq 10$AU in our galaxy using by the most powerful modern instruments which have the resolution of $10^{-2}$arcsecond such as a 10-meter optical-infrared telescope. The black holes which make the Einstein rings of the same size as the ones by the wormholes are galactic supermassive black holes and the relativistic Einstein rings by the black holes are too small to measure at this moment. We may test some hypotheses of astrophysical wormholes by using the Einstein ring and relativistic Einstein rings in the future., Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, minor changes from v2

Ho\v{r}ava--Lifshitz gravity has covariance only under the foliation-preserving diffeomorphism. This implies that the quantities on the constant-time hypersurfaces should be regular. In the original theory, the projectability condition, which strongly restricts the lapse function, is proposed. We assume that a star is filled with a perfect fluid with no-radial motion and that it has reflection symmetry about the equatorial plane. As a result, we find a no-go theorem for stationary and axisymmetric star solutions in projectable Ho\v{r}ava--Lifshitz gravity under the physically reasonable assumptions in the matter sector. Since we do not use the gravitational action to prove it, our result also works out in other projectable theories and applies to not only strong gravitational fields, but also weak gravitational ones., Comment: 18 pages, no figures, minor correction, title changed, accepted for publication in Galaxies

We investigate a trapped surface and naked singularity in a $D$-dimensional Vaidya spacetime with a self-similar mass function. A trapped surface is defined as a closed spacelike $(D-2)$-surface which has negative both null expansions. There is no trapped surface in the Minkowski spacetime. However, in a four-dimensional self-similar Vaidya spacetime, Bengtsson and Senovilla considered non-spherical trapped surfaces and showed that a trapped surface can penetrate into a flat region, if and only if the mass function rises fast enough [I. Bengtsson and J. M. M. Senovilla, Phys. Rev. D \textbf{79}, 024027 (2009).]. We apply this result to a $D$-dimensional spacetime motivated by the context of large extra dimensions or TeV-scale gravity. In this paper, similarly to Bengtsson and Senovilla's study, we match four types of $(D-2)$-surfaces and show that a trapped surface extended into the flat region can be constructed in the $D$-dimensional Vaidya spacetime, if the increasing rate of the mass function is greater than 0.4628. Moreover, we show that the maximum radius of the trapped surface constructed here approaches the Schwarzschild-Tangherlini radius in the large $D$ limit. Also, we show that there is no naked singularity, if the spacetime has the trapped surface constructed here., Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures

We investigate static spherically symmetric vacuum solutions in the IR limit of projectable nonrelativistic quantum gravity, including the renormalisable quantum gravity recently proposed by Ho\v{r}ava. It is found that the projectability condition plays an important role. Without the cosmological constant, the spacetime is uniquely given by the Schwarzschild solution. With the cosmological constant, the spacetime is uniquely given by the Kottler (Schwarzschild-(anti) de Sitter) solution for the entirely vacuum spacetime. However, in addition to the Kottler solution, the static spherical and hyperbolic universes are uniquely admissible for the locally empty region, for the positive and negative cosmological constants, respectively, if its nonvanishing contribution to the global Hamiltonian constraint can be compensated by that from the nonempty or nonstatic region. This implies that static spherically symmetric entirely vacuum solutions would not admit the freedom to reproduce the observed flat rotation curves of galaxies. On the other hand, the result for locally empty regions implies that the IR limit of nonrelativistic quantum gravity theories does not simply recover general relativity but includes it., Comment: 10 pages, accepted for publication in International Journal of Modern Physics D