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We demonstrate that the asymptotic oscillatory tails of massive gravitons, present in both massive theories of gravity and effectively in extra-dimensional scenarios, could potentially contribute to gravitational waves with very long wavelengths. However, their impact on recent pulsar timing array observations is expected to be relatively small, predominantly consisting of radiation emitted by black holes in our region of the Milky Way., 8 pages, 2 figures

We find accurate quasinormal frequencies of a quantum corrected black hole constructed in the renormalization group theory via the coordinate-independent iterative procedure, leading to the Dymnikova regular black hole. We show that while the fundamental mode is only slightly affected by the quantum correction, the overtones change at a much stronger rate. This outburst of overtones occurs because of the deformation of the geometry of the Schwarzschild black hole solely near the event horizon. For finding accurate values of overtones we developed a general procedure allowing one to use the Leaver method to metrics which, initially, are not expressed in terms of rational functions., 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 ancillary Mathematica file

We present the improved Mathematica code which computes quasinormal frequencies with the help of the Bernstein spectral method for a general class of black holes, allowing for asymptotically flat, de Sitter or anti-de Sitter asymptotic. The method is especially efficient when searching for purely imaginary and unstable modes and here it is used for detecting the instability region of a charged scalar field in the background of the charged asymptotically de Sitter dilatonic black hole. We show that the instability has superradiant nature and the dilaton field essentially influences the region of instability., 9 pages, 2 figures, 2 ancillary files

Using the general parametrization of spherically symmetric and asymptotically flat black holes in arbitrary metric theories of gravity and implying that: a) the post-Newtonian constraints are taken into account and b) basic astrophysically relevant characteristics (such as, dominant quasinormal modes, frequency at the innermost stable circular orbit, binding energy, radius of the shadow etc.) are indistinguishable from their Schwarzschild values, we propose a simple metric which depends on three independent parameters (coefficients of the parametrization). Variation of these three parameters can, nevertheless, lead to the two distinctive features. The first is the black-hole temperature, and consequently the Hawking radiation, which can differ a lot from its Schwarzschild limit. The second is the outburst of overtones which become extremely sensitive to small changes of the parameters., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Various profiles of matter distribution in galactic halos (such as Navarro-Frenk-White, Burkert, Hernquist, Moore, Taylor-Silk and others) are considered here as the source term for the Einstein equations. We solve these equations and find exact solutions which represent the metric of a central black hole immersed in a galactic halo. Even though in the general case the solution is numerical, very accurate general analytical metric, which includes all the particular models, are found in the astrophysically relevant regime, when the mass of the galaxy is much smaller than the characteristic scale in the halo., 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 ancillary Mathematica file, the version to match published in the journal

The general parametrization of spherically symmetric and asymptotically flat black-hole spacetimes in arbitrary metric theories of gravity was suggested in [3]. The parametrization is based on the continued fraction expansion in terms of the compact radial coordinate and has superior convergence and strict hierarchy of parameters. It is known that some observable quantities, related to particle motion around the black hole, such as the eikonal quasinormal modes, radius of the shadow, frequency at the innermost stable circular orbit, and others, depend mostly on only a few of the lowest coefficients of the parametrization. Here we continue this approach by studying the dominant (low-lying) quasinormal modes for such generally parametrized black holes. We show that, due to the hierarchy of parameters, the dominant quasinormal frequencies are also well determined by only the first few coefficients of the expansion for the so-called moderate black-hole geometries. The latter are characterized by a relatively slow change of the metric functions in the radiation zone near the black hole. The nonmoderate metrics, which change strongly between the event horizon and the innermost stable circular orbit are usually characterized by echoes or by the distinctive (from the Einstein case) quasinormal ringing which does not match the current observational data. Therefore, the compact description of a black-hole spacetime in terms of the truncated general parametrization is an effective formalism for testing strong gravity and imposing constraints on allowed black-hole geometries., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures

Here we propose a simple explanation why echoes from wormholes mimicking black holes may be so small that they cannot be observed. The essence of the effect is in the redistribution of the initial energy of gravitational wave among multiple universes, connected by a wormhole., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

Asymptotically safe gravity is based on the idea that the main contribution to the Schwarzschild-like black hole spacetime is due to the value of the gravitational coupling which depends on the distance from the origin and approaches its classical value in the far zone. However, at some stage this approach has an arbitrariness of choice of some identification parameter. The two cases of identification are considered here: first, by the modified proper length (the Bonanno-Reuter metric), and second, by the Kretschmann scalar (the metric for this case coincides, up to the redefinition of constants, with the Hayward metric). Even though the quasinormal modes of these metrics have been extensively studied, a number of interesting points were missed. We have found that quasinormal modes are qualitatively similar for both types of identification. The deviation of the fundamental mode from its Schwarzschild limit may be a few times larger than it was claimed in the previous studies. The striking deviation from the Schwarzschild limit occurs for overtones, being as large as hundreds of percent even when the fundamental mode is almost coinciding with the Schwarzschild one. This happens because the above metrics are very close to the Schwarzschild one everywhere, except a small region near the event horizon, which is crucial for overtones. The spectrum of both metrics contains purely imaginary (non-oscillatory) modes, which, for some values of parameters, can appear already at the second overtone., Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures

Hod's proposal claims that the least damped quasinormal mode of a black hole must have the imaginary part smaller than half of the surface gravity at the event horizon. The Strong Cosmic Censorship in General Relativity implies that this bound must be even weaker: half of the surface gravity at the Cauchy horizon. The appealing question is whether these bounds are limited by the Einstein theory only? Here we will present numerical evidence that once the black hole size is much smaller than then the radius of the cosmological horizon, both the Hod's proposal and the strong cosmic censorship bound for quasinormal modes are satisfied for general spherically symmetric black holes in an arbitrary metric theory of gravity. The low-lying quasinormal frequencies have the universal behavior in this regime and do not depend on the near-horizon geometry, but only on the asymptotic parameters: the value of the cosmological constant and black hole mass., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures

It is broadly believed that quasinormal modes (QNMs) cannot tell the black-hole near-horizon geometry, because usually the low-lying modes are determined by the scattering of perturbations around the peak of the effective potential. Using the general parametrization of the black-hole spacetimes respecting the generic post-Newtonian asymptotic, we will show that tiny modifications of the Schwarzschild/Kerr geometry in a small region near the event horizon lead to almost the same Schwarzschild/Kerr fundamental mode, but totally different first few overtones. Having in mind that the first several overtones affect the quasinormal (QN) ringing at its early and intermediate stage [M. Giesler, M. Isi, M. Scheel, and S. Teukolsky, Phys. Rev. X 9, 041060 (2019)], we argue that the near-horizon geometry could in principle be studied via the first few overtones of the QN spectrum, which is important because corrections to the Einstein theory must modify precisely the near-horizon geometry, keeping the known weak field regime. We discuss the connection of this observation with the so called "overtones' instability" recently studied in [J. Jaramillo et. al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 211102 (2022)]., Comment: 5 pages, two figures, revtex, one figure and a reference are added

We show that the quasinormal spectrum of gravitational perturbations of Schwarzschild - de Sitter black holes contains a new branch of purely imaginary modes. These modes are not algebraically special and we showed that the sum of them form the well-known in the literature exponential asymptotic tail. When the ratio of the event horizon radius to the cosmological horizon vanishes, these quasinormal modes approach modes of empty de Sitter spacetime. Thus, the spectrum consists of the two branches: Schwarzschild branch deformed by the cosmological constant and de Sitter branch deformed by the black hole mass. While the de Sitter branch contains purely imaginary modes only, the oscillatory modes (with nonzero real part) of the Schwarzschild branch can also become purely imaginary for some values of the cosmological constant, for which they approach the algebraically special mode., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

Quasinormal modes of scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational fields in the extreme Schwarzschild-de Sitter background are known to be expressed in analytic form as eigenvalues of the P\"oschl-Teller wavelike equation. We show that perturbations of fermionic fields (given by Dirac and Rarita-Schwinger equations) do not lead to the P\"oschl-Teller effective potential. Nevertheless, using the Frobenius method we find quasinormal modes analytically in this case as well. We write down the analytical formula for quasinormal frequencies of the near-extreme Schwarzschild-de Sitter black holes, which is valid for both bosonic and fermionic fields. We further extend the analysis to the case of charged rotating black holes and find a general analytical formula for quasinormal modes of the fields of various spin for the near extreme Kerr-Newman-de Sitter spacetime., Comment: 9 pages

We consider the Blandford-Znajek process of electromagnetic extraction of energy from a general axially symmetric asymptotically flat slowly rotating black hole. Using the general parametrization of the black-hole spacetime we construct formulas for the flux of the magnetic field and the rate of energy extraction, which are valid not only for the Kerr spacetime, but also for its arbitrary axially symmetric deformations. We show that in the dominant order these quantities depend only on a single deformation parameter, which relates the spin frequency of a black hole with its rotation parameter., Comment: 8 pages, revtex

In [J. Blazquez-Salcedo, C. Knoll, E. Radu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126 (2021) no.10, 101102] asymptotically flat traversable wormhole solutions were obtained in the Einstein-Dirac-Maxwell theory without using phantom matter. The normalizable numerical solutions found therein require a peculiar behavior at the throat: the mirror symmetry relatively the throat leads to the nonsmoothness of gravitational and matter fields. In particular, one must postulate changing of the sign of the fermionic charge density at the throat, requiring coexistence of particle and antiparticles without annihilation and posing a membrane of matter at the throat with specific properties. Apparently this kind of configuration could not exist in nature. We show that there are wormhole solutions, which are asymmetric relative the throat and endowed by smooth gravitational and matter fields, thereby being free from all the above problems. This indicates that such wormhole configurations could also be supported in a realistic scenario., Comment: (title changed)

Metric of axially symmetric asymptotically flat black holes in an arbitrary metric theory of gravity can be represented in the general form which depends on infinite number of parameters. We constrain this general class of metrics by requiring the existence of additional symmetries, which lead to the separation of variables in the Hamilton-Jacobi and Klein-Gordon equations, and show that once the metric functions change sufficiently moderately in some region near the black hole, the black-hole shadow depends on a few deformation parameters only. We analyze the influence of these parameters on the black-hole shadow. We also show that the shadow of the rotating black hole in the Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet theory is well approximated if the terms violating the separation of variables are neglected in the metric., Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures

Using perturbative expansion in terms of powers of the rotation parameter $a$ we construct the axisymmetric and asymptotically flat black-hole metric in the $D$-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory. In five-dimensional spacetime we find two solutions to the field equations, describing the asymptotically flat black holes, though only one of them is perturbative in mass, that is, goes over into the Minkowski spacetime when the black-hole mass goes to zero. We obtain the perturbative black-hole solution up to the order $O(\alpha a^3)$ for any $D$, where $\alpha$ is the Gauss-Bonnet coupling, while the $D=5$ solution which is nonperturbative in mass is found in analytic form up to the order $O(\alpha a^7)$. In order to check the convergence of the expansion in $a$ we analyze characteristics of photon orbits in this spacetime and compute frequencies of the photon orbits and radius of the photon sphere., Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure

The general parametrization of a black-hole spacetime in arbitrary metric theories of gravity includes an infinite set of parameters. It is natural to suppose that essential astrophysically observable quantities, such as quasinormal modes, parameters of shadow, electromagnetic radiation and accreting matter in the vicinity of a black hole, must depend mostly on a few of these parameters. Starting from the parametrization for spherically symmetric configurations in the form of infinite continued fraction, we suggest a compact representation of the asymptotically flat spherically symmetric and slowly rotating black holes in terms of only three and four parameters respectively. A subclass of arbitrarily rotating black holes belonging to the Carter family can also be parametrized by only four parameters. This approximate representation of a black-hole metric should allow one to describe physical observables in the region of strong gravity., Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, new material on rotating black holes is added - the version accepted for publication in Physical Review D

A $(3+1)$-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory of gravity has been recently formulated in [D. Glavan and C. Lin, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 124}, 081301 (2020)] which is different from the pure Einstein theory, i.e., bypasses the Lovelock's theorem and avoids Ostrogradsky instability. The theory was formulated in $D > 4$ dimensions and its action consists of the Einstein-Hilbert term with a cosmological constant, while the Gauss-Bonnet term multiplied by a factor $1/(D-4)$. Then, the four-dimensional theory is defined as the limit $D \to 4$. Here we generalize this approach to the four-dimensional Einstein-Lovelock theory and formulate the most general static $4D$ black-hole solution allowing for a $\Lambda$-term (either positive or negative) and the electric charge $Q$. As metric functions cannot be found in a closed form in the general case, we develop and share publicly the code which constructs the metric functions for every given set of parameters., Comment: 5 pages, 1 ancillary Mathematica(R) notebook

A (3+1)-dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet effective description of gravity has been recently formulated as the $D \to 4$ limit of the higher dimensional field equations after the rescaling of the coupling constant. This approach has been recently extended to the four-dimensional Einstein-Lovelock gravity. Although validity of the regularization procedure has not been shown for the general case, but only for a wide class of metrics, the black-hole solution obtained as a result of such a regularization is also an exact solution in the well defined 4D Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory suggested by Aoki, Gorji and Mukohyama [arXiv:2005.03859] and in the scalar-tensor effective classical theories. Here we study the eikonal gravitational instability of asymptotically flat, de Sitter and anti-de Sitter black holes in the four dimensional Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet and Einstein-Lovelock theories. We find parametric regions of the eikonal instability for various orders of the Lovelock gravity, values of coupling and cosmological constants, and share the code which allows one to construct the instability region for an arbitrary set of parameters. For the four-dimensional Gauss-Bonnet black holes we obtain the region of stability in analytic form. Unlike the higher dimensional Einstein-Lovelock case, the eikonal instability serves as an effective cut-off of higher curvature Lovelock terms for the 4D black holes., 14 pages (JCAP style), 3 figures

An analytical solution representing traversable asymptotically flat and symmetric wormholes was obtained without adding exotic matter in two different theories independently: in the Einstein-Maxwell-Dirac theory and in the second Randall-Sundrum brane-world model. Further, a smooth normalizable asymmetric wormhole solution has been recently obtained numerically in the Einstein-Maxwell-Dirac theory. Using the time-domain integration method we study quasinormal ringing of all these wormholes with emphasis to the regime of mimicking the near extremal Reissner-Nordstr\"om black holes, which is characterised by echoes. In addition, we calculate radius of shadows cast by these wormholes., Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures

Recently, numerical solutions to the field equations of Einstein-scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravity that correspond to black-holes with non-trivial scalar hair have been reported. Here, we employ the method of the continued-fraction expansion in terms of a compact coordinate in order to obtain an analytical approximation for the aforementioned solutions. For a wide variety of coupling functionals to the Gauss-Bonnet term we were able to obtain analytical expressions for the metric functions and the scalar field. In addition we estimated the accuracy of these approximations by calculating the black-hole shadows for such black holes. Excellent agreement between the numerical solutions and analytical approximations has been found., Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures, 1 ancillary Mathematica(R) notebook, version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D

Arbitrarily long lived modes, called quasi-resonances, are known to exist in the spectrum of massive fields for a number of black-hole backgrounds at some discrete values of mass of the field. Here we show that these modes also exist in the background of wormholes, unless a wormhole has a constant red-shift function, that is, tideless in the radial direction. The evidence of quasi-resonances is supported by calculations in the frequency and time domains, which are in a good concordance. At large masses of the field, time-domain profiles of the absolute value of the wave function have peculiar behavior: the long-lived modes dominate in the signal after a long period of power-law tails., 7 pages, revtex, minor changes to match the version accepted for publication in Physics Letters B

The Einstein-Lovelock theory contains an infinite series of corrections to the Einstein term with an increasing power of the curvature. It is well-known that for large black holes the lowest (Gauss-Bonnet) term is the dominant one, while for smaller black holes higher curvature corrections become important. We will show that if one is limited by positive values of the coupling constants, then the dynamical instability of black holes serves as an effective cut-off of influence of higher curvature corrections in the 4D Einstein-Lovelock approach: the higher is the order of the Lovelock term, the smaller is the maximal value of the coupling constant allowing for stability, so that effectively only a first few orders can deform the observable values seemingly. For negative values of coupling constants this is not so, and, despite some suppression of higher order terms also occurs due to the decreasing threshold values of the coupling constant, this does not lead to an noticeable opportunity to neglect higher order corrections. In the case a lot of orders of Lovelock theory are taken into account, so that the black-hole solution depends on a great number of coupling constants, we propose a compact description of it in terms of only two or three parameters encoding all the observable values., Comment: 8 pages, 1 ancillary Mathematica(R) notebook

An interpretation to the physics of stable geodesics of massive particles in black hole backgrounds has been recently proposed in the context of the AdS/CFT correspondence. It was argued that the existence of stable orbits indicates that the dual state does not thermalize on a thermal time scale and the bulk excitations can be interpreted as metastable states in the dual field theory. Here we study motion of massive particles in the background of the D-dimensional asymptotically anti-de Sitter (AdS) black holes in the Einstein-Lovelock theory. We show that, unlike the asymptotically flat case, for any kind of higher curvature Lovelock corrections there appear a stable circular orbit at a distance from the black hole. We find the general analytical expressions for the frequencies of distant circular orbits and radial oscillation frequencies. We show that the corresponding correction has the same power as in the Schwarzschild-AdS case, implying a universal scaling with the temperature for any Lovelock theory., Comment: 6 pages (revtex), 1 figure

The regularization procedure for getting the four-dimensional nontrivial Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet effective description of gravity and its Lovelock generalization has been recently developed. Here we propose the regularization for the three-dimensional gravity, which is based on the rescaling of the coupling constants and, afterward, taking the limit $D \to 3$. We obtain the generalization of the Ba\~nados-Teitelboim-Zanelli solution in the presence of the higher curvature (Gauss-Bonnet and Lovelock) corrections of any order. The obtained general solution shows a peculiar behavior: The event horizon is allowed not only for asymptotically anti-de Sitter spacetimes, but also for the de-Sitter and flat cases, when the Gauss-Bonnet coupling constant is negative. The factor of the electric charge is analyzed as well for various branches of the solution and the Hawking temperature is obtained., Comment: 8 pages

Recently LIGO and VIRGO collaborations reported about observation of gravitational-wave signal corresponding to the inspiral and merger of two black holes, resulting into formation of the final black hole. It was shown that the observations are consistent with the Einstein theory of gravity with high accuracy limited mainly by the statistical error. Angular momentum and mass of the final black hole were determined with rather large allowance of tens of percents. Here we shall show that this indeterminacy in the range of the black-hole parameters allows for some not negligible deformations of the Kerr spacetime leading to the same frequencies of black-hole ringing. This means that at the current precision of the experiment there remain some possibilities for alternative theories of gravity., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure

It is well known that a hypothetical compact object that looks like an Einsteinian (Schwarzschild or Kerr) black hole everywhere except a small region near its surface should have the ringdown profile predicted by the Einstein theory at early and intermediate times, but modified by the so-called echoes at late times. A similar phenomenon appears when one considers an Einsteinian black hole and a shell of matter placed at some distance from it, so that astrophysical estimates could be made for the allowed mass of the black hole environment. While echoes for both systems have been extensively studied recently, no such analysis has been done for a system featuring phenomena simultaneously, that is, echoes due to new physics near the surface/event horizon and echoes due to matter at some distance from the black hole. Here, following [9, 11], we consider a traversable wormhole obtained by identifying two Schwarzschild metrics with the same mass M at the throat, which is near the Schwarzschild radius, and add a nonthin shell of matter at a distance. This allows us to understand how the echoes of the surface of the compact object are affected by the astrophysical environment at a distance. The straightforward calculations for the time-domain profiles of such a system support the expectations that if the echoes are observed, they should most probably be ascribed to some new physics near the event horizon rather than some "environmental" effect., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

The Schwarzschild star is an ultracompact object beyond the Buchdahl limit, which has Schwarzschild geometry outside its surface and positive pressure in the external layer which vanishes at the surface. Recently it has been shown that the Schwarzschild star is stable against spherically symmetric perturbations. Here we study arbitrary axial nonspherical perturbations, and show that the observable quasinormal modes can be as close to the Schwarzschild limit as one wishes, what makes the Schwarzschild star a very good mimicker of a black hole. The decaying time-domain profiles prove that the Schwarzschild star is stable against nonspherical perturbations as well. Another peculiar feature is the absence of echoes at the end of the ringdown. Instead we observe a nonoscillating mode which might belong to the class of algebraically special modes. At asymptotically late times, Schwarzschildian power-law tails dominate in the signal., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

The WKB approach for finding quasinormal modes of black holes, suggested in [1] by Schutz and Will at the first order and later developed to higher orders [2-4], became popular during the past decades, because, unlike more sophisticated numerical approaches, it is automatic for different effective potentials and mostly provides sufficient accuracy. At the same time, the seeming simplicity of the WKB approach resulted in appearance of a big number of partially misleading papers, where the WKB formula was used beyond its scope of applicability. Here we review various situations in which the WKB formula can or cannot bring us to reliable conclusions. As the WKB series converges only asymptotically, there is no mathematically strict criterium for evaluation of an error. Therefore, here we are trying to introduce a number of practical recipes instead and summarize cases in which higher WKB orders improve accuracy. We show that averaging of the Pade approximations, suggested first by J. Matyjasek and M. Opala [4], leads to much higher accuracy of the WKB approach, estimate the error and present the automatic code [5] which computes quasinormal modes and grey-body factors., Comment: 15 pages (revtex), 4 figures

Here we construct approximate analytical forms for the metric coefficients and fields representing the scalarized Einstein-Maxwell black holes with various couplings of the scalar field, once the parameters of the system are fixed. By increasing approximation order, one can obtain the analytic representation with any desired accuracy, what was tested via calculations of shadows for these black holes by using approximate analytical and accurate numerical metric functions. We share the Mathematica code which allows one to find an appropriate analytical form of the metric for any couplings and values of parameters. Scalarization increases the radius of the black-hole shadow for all the considered coupling functions., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, ancillary Mathematica package and 2 notebooks

Quasinormal modes of a massive Dirac field were calculated for various static black hole backgrounds with the help of the WKB formula. These estimations, however, are rough and valid only for very small values of $\mu M$, where $M$ and $\mu$ are mass of the black hole and field respectively. Thus, no accurate calculations of massive Dirac modes are known even for the Schwarzschild black hole and this is all the more so for the Kerr solution. Here we calculate quasinormal modes of a massive Dirac field in the Kerr background. We have shown that the infinitely long-lived quasinormal modes (quasiresonances), which exist for boson fields, appear also in the fermions' quasinormal spectrum. Two chiralities of massive fermions lead to an additional "fine structure" in the spectrum. We discuss the effect of this fine structure on the behavior of quasiresonances and the stability. The analysis is also extended to a charged massive field in the Kerr-Newman background., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (GR) successfully describes gravity. The most fundamental predictions of GR are black holes (BHs), but in spite of many convincing BH candidates in the Universe, there is no conclusive experimental proof of their existence using astronomical observations in the electromagnetic spectrum. Are BHs real astrophysical objects? Does GR hold in its most extreme limit or are alternatives needed? The prime target to address these fundamental questions is in the center of our own Galaxy, which hosts the closest and best-constrained supermassive BH candidate in the Universe, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Three different types of experiments hold the promise to test GR in a strong-field regime using observations of Sgr A* with new-generation instruments. The first experiment aims to image the relativistic plasma emission which surrounds the event horizon and forms a "shadow" cast against the background, whose predicted size (~50 microarcseconds) can now be resolved by upcoming VLBI experiments at mm-waves such as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). The second experiment aims to monitor stars orbiting Sgr A* with the upcoming near-infrared interferometer GRAVITY at the Very Large Telescope (VLT). The third experiment aims to time a radio pulsar in tight orbit about Sgr A* using radio telescopes (including the Atacama Large Millimeter Array or ALMA). The BlackHoleCam project exploits the synergy between these three different techniques and aims to measure the main BH parameters with sufficient precision to provide fundamental tests of GR and probe the spacetime around a BH in any metric theory of gravity. Here, we review our current knowledge of the physical properties of Sgr A* as well as the current status of such experimental efforts towards imaging the event horizon, measuring stellar orbits, and timing pulsars around Sgr A*., Comment: review paper, 36 pages, 12 figures (v2 is the published version)

We determine the class of axisymmetric and asymptotically flat black-hole spacetimes for which the test Klein-Gordon and Hamilton-Jacobi equations allow for the separation of variables. The known Kerr, Kerr-Newman, Kerr-Sen and some other black-hole metrics in various theories of gravity are within the class of spacetimes described here. It is shown that although the black-hole metric in the Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet theory does not allow for the separation of variables (at least in the considered coordinates), for a number of applications it can be effectively approximated by a metric within the above class. This gives us some hope that the class of spacetimes described here may be not only generic for the known solutions allowing for the separation of variables, but also a good approximation for a broader class of metrics, which does not admit such separation. Finally, the generic form of the axisymmetric metric is expanded in the radial direction in terms of the continued fractions and the connection with other black-hole parametrizations is discussed., 14 pages

In [P. Kanti, B. Kleihaus, J. Kunz, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 271101 (2011)] it was shown that the four-dimensional Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet theory allows for wormholes without introducing any exotic matter. The numerical solution for the wormhole was obtained there and it was claimed that this solution is gravitationally stable against radial perturbations, what, by now, would mean the only known theoretical possibility for existence of an apparently stable, four-dimensional and asymptotically flat wormhole without exotic matter. Here, more detailed analysis of perturbations shows that the Kanti-Kleihaus-Kunz wormhole is unstable against small perturbations for any values of its parameters. The exponential growth appears in the time domain after a long period of damped oscillations, in the same way as it takes place in the case of unstable higher-dimensional black holes in the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory. The instability is driven by the purely imaginary mode, which is nonperturbative in the Gauss-Bonnet coupling$\alpha$., Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures

Here we show that the phenomenon of arbitrarily long-lived quasinormal modes (called quasiresonances) of a massive scalar field in the vicinity of a black hole is not an artifact of the test field approximation, but takes place also when the (derivative) coupling of a scalar field with the Einstein tensor is taken into consideration. We observe that at large coupling and high multipole numbers, the growing modes appear in the spectrum, which are responsible for the eikonal instability of the field. For small coupling, when the configuration is stable, there appear the purely imaginary quasinormal modes which are nonperturbative in the coupling constant. At the sufficiently small coupling the nonminimal scalar field is stable and the asymptotic late-time tails are not affected by the coupling term. The accurate calculations of quasinormal frequencies for a massive scalar field with the derivative coupling in the Reissner-Nordstr��m black-hole background are performed with the help of Frobenius method, time-domain integration and WKB expansion., 8 pages, 4 figures

Higher derivative extensions of Einstein gravity are important within the string theory approach to gravity and as alternative and effective theories of gravity. H. L\"u, A. Perkins, C. Pope, K. Stelle [Phys.Rev.Lett. 114 (2015), 171601] found a numerical solution describing a spherically symmetric non-Schwarzschild asymptotically flat black hole in the Einstein gravity with added higher derivative terms. Using the general and quickly convergent parametrization in terms of the continued fractions, we represent this numerical solution in the analytical form, which is accurate not only near the event horizon or far from black hole, but in the whole space. Thereby, the obtained analytical form of the metric allows one to study easily all the further properties of the black hole, such as thermodynamics, Hawking radiation, particle motion, accretion, perturbations, stability, quasinormal spectrum, etc. Thus, the found analytical approximate representation can serve in the same way as an exact solution., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, 1 ancillary Mathematica(R) notebook

Perturbations and eikonal instabilities of black holes and branes in the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory and its Lovelock generalization were considered in the literature for several particular cases, where the asymptotic conditions (flat, dS, AdS), the number of spacetime dimensions $D$, non-vanishing coupling constants ($\alpha_1$, $\alpha_2$, $\alpha_3$ etc.) and other parameters have been chosen in a specific way. Here we give a comprehensive analysis of the eikonal instabilities of black holes and branes for the \emph{most general} Lovelock theory, not limited by any of the above cases. Although the part of the stability analysis is performed here purely analytically and formulated in terms of the inequalities for the black hole parameters, the most general case is treated numerically and the accurate regions of instabilities are presented. The shared Mathematica(R) code allows the reader to construct the regions of eikonal instability for any desired values of the parameters., Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, supplementary Mathematica(R) notebook

Recently it has been argued that the phantom thin-shell wormholes matched with the Schwarzschild space-time near the Schwarzschild radius ring like Schwarzschild black holes at early times, but differently at late times (arXiv:1602.07309). Here we consider perturbations of the wormhole which was constructed without thin-shells: the Bronnikov-Ellis wormhole supported by the phantom matter and electromagnetic field. This wormhole solution is known to be stable under specific equation of state of the phantom matter. We show that if one does not use the above thin-shell matching, the wormhole, depending on the values of its parameters, either rings as the black hole at all times or rings differently also at all times. The wormhole's spectrum, investigated here, posses a number of distinctive features. In the final part we have considered general properties of scattering around arbitrary rotating traversable wormholes. We have found that symmetric and non-symmetric (with respect to the throat) wormholes are qualitatively different in this respect: First, superradiance is allowed only if for those non-symmetric wormholes for which the asymptotic values of the rotation parameters are different on both sides from the throat. Second, the symmetric wormholes cannot mimic effectively the ringing of a black hole at a few various dominant multipoles at the same time, so that the future observations of various events should easily tell the symmetric wormhole from a black hole., 13 pages, 4 figures

Analysis of time-domain profiles for gravitational perturbations shows that Gauss-Bonnet black holes in a de Sitter world possess a new kind of dynamical instability which does not take place for asymptotically flat Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet black holes. The new instability is in the gravitational perturbations of the scalar type and is due to the nonvanishing cosmological constant. Analysis of the quasinormal spectrum in the stability sector shows that although the scalar type of gravitational perturbations alone does not obey Hod's conjectural bound, connecting the damping rate and the Hawking temperature, the vector and tensor types (and thereby the gravitational spectrum as a whole) do obey it., Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures

Following previous work of ours in spherical symmetry, we here propose a new parametric framework to describe the spacetime of axisymmetric black holes in generic metric theories of gravity. In this case, the metric components are functions of both the radial and the polar angular coordinates, forcing a double expansion to obtain a generic axisymmetric metric expression. In particular, we use a continued-fraction expansion in terms of a compactified radial coordinate to express the radial dependence, while we exploit a Taylor expansion in terms of the cosine of the polar angle for the polar dependence. These choices lead to a superior convergence in the radial direction and to an exact limit on the equatorial plane. As a validation of our approach, we build parametrized representations of Kerr, rotating dilaton, and Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet black holes. The match is already very good at lowest order in the expansion and improves as new orders are added. We expect a similar behavior for any stationary and axisymmetric black-hole metric., Comment: 17 pages, to be published in PRD

Perturbations of black holes, initially considered in the context of possible observations of astrophysical effects, have been studied for the past ten years in string theory, brane-world models and quantum gravity. Through the famous gauge/gravity duality, proper oscillations of perturbed black holes, called quasinormal modes (QNMs), allow for the description of the hydrodynamic regime in the dual finite temperature field theory at strong coupling, which can be used to predict the behavior of quark-gluon plasmas in the nonperturbative regime. On the other hand, the brane-world scenarios assume the existence of extra dimensions in nature, so that multidimensional black holes can be formed in a laboratory experiment. All this stimulated active research in the field of perturbations of higher-dimensional black holes and branes during recent years. In this review recent achievements on various aspects of black hole perturbations are discussed such as decoupling of variables in the perturbation equations, quasinormal modes (with special emphasis on various numerical and analytical methods of calculations), late-time tails, gravitational stability, AdS/CFT interpretation of quasinormal modes, and holographic superconductors. We also touch on state-of-the-art observational possibilities for detecting quasinormal modes of black holes., Comment: 49 pages, 16 figures, to be published in Reviews of Modern Physics. The style and reference list are slightly different from the journal version

Collaborative international efforts under the name of the Event Horizon Telescope project, using sub- mm very long baseline interferometry, are soon expected to provide the first images of the shadow cast by the candidate supermassive black hole in our Galactic center, Sagittarius A*. Observations of this shadow would provide direct evidence of the existence of astrophysical black holes. Although it is expected that astrophysical black holes are described by the axisymmetric Kerr solution, there also exist many other black hole solutions, both in general relativity and in other theories of gravity, which cannot presently be ruled out. To this end, we present calculations of black hole shadow images from various metric theories of gravity as described by our recent work on a general parameterisation of axisymmetric black holes [R. Konoplya, L. Rezzolla and A. Zhidenko, Phys. Rev. D 93, 064015 (2016)]. An algorithm to perform general ray-tracing calculations for any metric theory of gravity is first outlined and then employed to demonstrate that even for extremal metric deformation parameters of various black hole spacetimes, this parameterisation is both robust and rapidly convergent to the correct solution., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables; Accepted for publication in PRD

It has been recently found that for the near extremal Kerr black holes appearing of Zero Damped Modes (accompanied by qusinormal mode branching) signifies about inapplicability of the regime of small perturbations and the onset of turbulence. Here we show that this phenomena is not limited by Kerr or Kerr-Newman solutions only, but also takes place for rotating dilatonic black holes for which we have found Zero Damped Modes both numerically and analytically. We have also shown that, contrary to recent claims, there is no instability of a charged massive scalar field in the background of the rotating dilatonic black hole under physically adequate boundary conditions. Analytic expression for dominant quasinormal frequencies is deduced in the regime of large coupling qQ, where q and Q are the field and black hole charges respectively., 6 pages, 5 figures

We propose a new parametric framework to describe in generic metric theories of gravity the spacetime of spherically symmetric and slowly rotating black holes. In contrast to similar approaches proposed so far, we do not use a Taylor expansion in powers of M/r, where M and r are the mass of the black hole and a generic radial coordinate, respectively. Rather, we use a continued-fraction expansion in terms of a compactified radial coordinate. This choice leads to superior convergence properties and allows us to approximate a number of known metric theories with a much smaller set of coefficients. The measure of these coefficients via observations of near-horizon processes can be used to effectively constrain and compare arbitrary metric theories of gravity. Although our attention is here focussed on spherically symmetric black holes, we also discuss how our approach could be extended to rotating black holes., Appendix added for a more detailed comparison; matches version in PRD

Recently, a new interesting instability of a charged scalar field in the Reissner-Nordstr\"om-de Sitter background has been found (arXiv:1405.4931v2) through the time-domain integration of the perturbation equation. We investigate further properties of this instability, confirm its existence by concordant frequency-domain and time-domain calculations and show that it occurs at however small value of the coupling eQ, where e and Q are charges of a scalar field and black hole respectively. We also investigate the parametric region of instability and show that the critical values of eQ at which the stabilization happens strongly depends on the value of cosmological constant $\Lambda$ and softly on Q. We show that all the unstable modes are superradiant, but not all the superradiant modes are unstable. We analytically prove that superradiance is necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the instability in this case and, thereby, demonstrate the superradiant origin of the instability., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

We perform accurate calculations of the energy-, momentum-, and charge-emission rates of a charged scalar field in the background of the Kerr-Newman black hole at the range of parameters for which the effect is not negligibly small and, at the same time, the semiclassical regime is, at least marginally, valid. For black holes with charge below or not much higher than the charge accretion limit $Q \sim \mu M/e$ (where $e$ and $\mu$ are the electron's mass and charge), the time between the consequent emitting of two charged particles is very large. For primordial black holes the transition between the increasing and decreasing of the ratio $Q/M$ occurs around the charge accretion limit. The rotation increases the intensity of radiation up to three orders, while the effect of the field's mass strongly suppresses the radiation., Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures

In our earlier work (PRL 103 (2009) 161101) it was shown that nonextremal highly charged Reissner-Nordstrom-de Sitter black holes are gravitationally unstable in D>6-dimensional space-times. Here, we find accurate threshold values of the $\Lambda$-term at which the instability of the extremally charged black holes starts. The larger $D$ is, the smaller is the threshold value of $\Lambda$. We have shown that the ratio $\rho = r_{h}/r_{cos}$ (where $r_{cos}$ and $r_{h}$ are the cosmological and event horizons) is proportional to $e^{-(D-4)/2}$ at the onset of instability for D=7,8,...11, implying that the same law should fulfill for arbitrary D. This is numerical evidence that extremally charged Reissner-Nordstrom-de Sitter black holes are gravitationally unstable for D>6, while asymptotically flat extremally charged Reissner-Nordstrom black holes are stable for all D. The instability is not connected to the horizon instability discussed recently in the literature, and, unlike the later one, develops also outside the event horizon, that is, it can be seen by an external observer. In addition, for the nonextremal case through fitting of the numerical data we obtained an approximate analytical formula which relates values of charge and the $\Lambda$-term at the onset of instability., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

So far analysis of the quasinormal spectrum of a massive charged scalar field in the black hole background has been limited by the regime of small \mu M and qQ, where \mu, q (M, Q) are mass and charge of the field (black hole). Here we shall present a comprehensive picture of quasinormal modes, late-time tails and stability of a massive charged scalar field around Kerr-Newman black holes for any physically meaningful values of the parameters. We shall show that despite presence of the two mechanisms of superradiance (owing to black hole's rotation and charge) and the massive term creating growing bound states, there is no indication of instability under quasinormal modes' boundary conditions. We have shown that for some moderate values of qQ dominant quasinormal modes may have arbitrarily small real oscillation frequencies Re(\omega). An analytic formula for the quasinormal modes has been derived in the regime of large qQ. The larger the field's charge, the sooner asymptotic tails dominate in a signal, making it difficult to extract quasinormal frequencies from a time-domain profile. Analytic expressions for intermediate and asymptotically late-time tails have been found for the Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole. For the near extremal Kerr-Newman black holes we have obtained a more general picture of the mode branching found recently for massless fields [arXiv:1212.3271] in the Kerr background., Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures

We test the stability of various wormholes and black holes supported by a scalar field with a negative kinetic term. The general axial perturbations and the monopole type of polar perturbations are considered in the linear approximation. Two classes of objects are considered: (i) wormholes with flat asymptotic behavior at one end and AdS on the other (M-AdS wormholes) and (ii) regular black holes with asymptotically de Sitter expansion far beyond the horizon (the so-called black universes). A difficulty in such stability studies is that the effective potential for perturbations forms an infinite wall at throats, if any. Its regularization is in general possible only by numerical methods, and such a method is suggested in a general form and used in the present paper. As a result, we have shown that all configurations under study are unstable under spherically symmetric perturbations, except for a special class of black universes where the event horizon coincides with the minimum of the area function. For this stable family, the frequencies of quasinormal modes of axial perturbations are calculated., Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures. Final version published in PRD. Eqs (29) and (30) corrected

Usually alternative theories of gravity imply deviations from the well-known Kerr space-time, a model of an isolated black hole in General Relativity. In the dominant order, the deformed Kerr metric, free of closed time-like curves outside the event horizon, has been suggested recently by Johannsen and Psaltis. It has a single deformation parameter which is not constrained by the current observations, allowing, thereby, for a kind of unified and simple phenomenological description of black holes in various theories of gravity. Here we consider a number of classical and quantum phenomena of radiation in the vicinity of such deformed Schwarzschild-like and Kerr-like black holes: spiralling of particles into black holes, decay of fields propagating in the black hole's background, Hawking radiation. In particular, we calculate some quantitative characteristics of the above phenomena, such as the binding energy of particles, quasinormal modes, late-time tails of fields of various spin, intensity of Hawking radiation. The binding energy released when a particle goes over from a given stable orbit in the equatorial plane to the innermost stable one is calculated for such non-Kerr black holes. Due to inseparability of the wave equations in the general case, the perturbations and stability of scalar, Dirac, and electromagnetic fields are analyzed for vanishing rotation only. The dependence of the radiation phenomena on the deformation parameter is discussed., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures