9–11 Sept 2024
Catania
Europe/Rome timezone

Searching for quantum gravity footprint around stellar-mass black holes

9 Sept 2024, 17:20
25m
Villa Cerami (Catania)

Villa Cerami

Catania

Via Crociferi 91

Speaker

Luigi Foschini (INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera)

Description

According to the asymptotically safe gravity, black holes can have characteristics different from those described according to general relativity. Particularly, they are more compact, with a smaller event horizon, which in turn affects the other quantities dependent on it, like the photon ring and the size of the innermost stable circular orbit. We decided to test the latter by searching in the literature for observational measurements of the emission from accretion disk around stellar-mass black holes. All published values of the radius of the inner accretion disk were made homogeneous by taking into account the most recent and more reliable values of mass, spin, viewing angle, and distance from the Earth. We do not find any significant deviation from the expectations of general relativity. Some doubtful cases can be easily understood as due to specific states of the object during the observation or instrumental biases.

Primary authors

Luigi Foschini (INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera) Dr Alberto Vecchiato (Osservatorio Astrofisico Torino - INAF) Alfio Maurizio Bonanno (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)

Presentation materials