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Astrophysical Black Holes: Evidence of a Horizon?

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Analogue Gravity Phenomenology

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Physics ((LNP,volume 870))

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Abstract

In this Lecture Note we first follow a short account of the history of the black hole hypothesis. We then review on the current status of the search for astrophysical black holes with particular attention to the black holes of stellar origin. Later, we highlight a series of observations that reveal the albeit indirect presence of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei, with mention to forthcoming experiments aimed at testing directly the black hole hypothesis. We further focus on evidences of a black hole event horizon in cosmic sources.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The references have been limited to a minimum and are focussed on mentioning main key papers supplemented by specific reviews and some recent publications, which do include more extensive references.

  2. 2.

    Black holes can also carry a finite electric charge: they are described by the known Kerr-Newman metric which is the solution of the Einstein-Maxwell field equation in GR for a rotating, charged point mass. As any electric charge excess is shorted by opposite charges in the cosmic environment, charged black holes have no astrophysical relevance, in this Lecture Note.

  3. 3.

    We recall that degenerate particles of mass m e (i.e. electrons for white dwarfs) at a given density n have a distribution in the momentum space p which is flat up to the maximum, known as Fermi momentum, p F=(3h 3 n/8π)1/3, where h the Planck constant. Pressure in this fluid scales as \(P\propto n(p/m_{\mathrm{e}})p\propto np^{2}_{\mathrm{F}}\propto n^{5/3}\) when the particles are non-relativistic; for ultra-relativistic electrons, P∝ncp F∝n 4/3.

  4. 4.

    These explosions are identified as Type Ia supernovae.

  5. 5.

    A radically different viewpoint was presented by Witten with the introduction of the strange star model. The idea of the strange star rests on the hypothesis that strange quark matter, composed by equal number of up, down and strange quarks, could be the absolute ground state of matter [20]. The simplest model of self-bound strange quark matter is the MIT bag model for which P=(ρc 2−4B)/3 where B is the Bag constant. Interestingly, strange stars exist only below a maximum mass of about 2.033M⊙ for B=56 MeV fm−3.

  6. 6.

    This technique reminiscent of echo mapping makes use of the intrinsic variability of the continuum source in active galactic nuclei to map out the distribution and kinematics of line-emitting gas from its light travel time-delayed response to continuum changes. These echo mapping experiments yield sizes for the broad line-emitting region that have been studied in about three dozen AGNs. The dynamics of the line-emitting gas appears to be dominated by the gravity of the central black hole, enabling measurement of the black-hole masses in AGN.

  7. 7.

    Physical collisions do not affect the lifetime of clusters made of black holes as light as 0.005M⊙, due to their small sizes. For these light mini-black holes the evaporation time can also be made arbitrarily long, owing to the weakness of gravitational encounters, when m ∗→0. These mini-black-holes would however not be of stellar origin, and no current astrophysical scenario predict their existence.

  8. 8.

    Recently, the evidence for a constant inner radius in the thermal state has been presented for a number of sources via plots showing that the bolometric luminosity of the thermal component is approximately proportional to \(T_{\mathrm{eff}}^{4}\). This indicates the stability of the radii of the inner annuli contributing most to the thermal emission.

  9. 9.

    The spin of a black hole changes sizably only if the black hole accretes a mass of the order of the black hole mass itself.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Fisica G. Occhialini, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, Piazza della Scienza 3, 20126, Milano, Italy

    Monica Colpi

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  1. Monica Colpi
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Correspondence to Monica Colpi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Physical Science, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Daniele Faccio

  2. Dipartimento di Matematica, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Francesco Belgiorno

  3. Dipartimento di Fisica e Matematica, Universita’ dell’Insubria, Como, Italy

    Sergio Cacciatori

  4. Dipartimento di Fisica e Matematica, Universita’ dell’Insubria, Como, Italy

    Vittorio Gorini

  5. Int. School for Adv. Studies (SISSA), Trieste, Italy

    Stefano Liberati

  6. Dipartimento di Fisica e Matematica, Universita’ dell’Insubria, Como, Italy

    Ugo Moschella

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Colpi, M. (2013). Astrophysical Black Holes: Evidence of a Horizon?. In: Faccio, D., Belgiorno, F., Cacciatori, S., Gorini, V., Liberati, S., Moschella, U. (eds) Analogue Gravity Phenomenology. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 870. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00266-8_16

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