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The Astrophysical Signatures of Black Holes: The Horizon, The ISCO, The Ergosphere and The Light Circle

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General Relativity, Cosmology and Astrophysics

Part of the book series: Fundamental Theories of Physics ((FTPH,volume 177))

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Abstract

Three advanced instruments planned for a near future (LOFT, GRAVITY, THE EVENT HORIZON TELESCOPE) provide unprecedented angular and time resolutions, which allow to probe regions in the immediate vicinity of black holes. We may soon be able to search for the signatures of the super-strong gravity that is characteristic to black holes: the event horizon, the ergosphere, the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO), and the photon circle. This review discusses a few fundamental problems concerning these theoretical concepts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The modern history of black holes started thanks to great discoveries of Schwarzschild [1], Chandrasekhar [2] and Oppenheimer [3], and the follow-up work in the 1960s and the 1970s, done mostly by collaborators and students of Dennis W. Sciama in Cambridge (Carter, Ellis, Gibbons, Hawking, Penrose), John A. Wheeler in Princeton (Bekenstein, Ruffini, Thorne) and Yakov B. Zel’dovich in Moscow (Novikov, Starobinsky) and other researchers (e.g. Israel, Damour, Kerr, Kruskal, Wald).

  2. 2.

    Here, and in a few other places, I directly quote a Living Review devoted to the subject: Abramowicz and Fragile, Foundations of Black Hole Accretion Disk Theory.

  3. 3.

    Homepage http://www.mpe.mpg.de/ir/gravity.

  4. 4.

    At http://www.physics.uci.edu/~etolleru/KerrOrbitProject.pdf the Christoffel symbols are given (by Tollerud 2007) in the form of a Mathematica package. Unfortunately, there is an error in the Kerr metric: the \(g_{t\phi }\) metric component is (consistently everywhere) factor of \(2\) too big. See also [6].

  5. 5.

    In this Section I quote extensively from a paper in preparation: Abramowicz, Gourgoulhon, Lasota, Narayan and Tchekhovskoy (2013), Blandford-Znajek mechanism as the Penrose process. Application to Magnetically Arrested Disks.

  6. 6.

    See also [17].

  7. 7.

    In this Section I quote in extenso a few paragraphs from an unfinished draft of an unpublished paper by Abramowicz, Horák and Kluźniak, The MRI in the plunge-in region: the Shakura–Sunyaev ISCO paradigm confirmed, 2013, in preparation.

  8. 8.

    However, [40, 41] and others pointed to some difficulties with the MRI concept and also with its description in the shearing box simulations.

  9. 9.

    But see [55].

  10. 10.

    Based on a lecture by M. Bursa given at the 9 RAGtime Workshop in Opava, 19–21 September, 2007 [61].

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Acknowledgments

My work at the Silesian University in Opava was supported by the Czech CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0071 “Synergy” grant for international collaboration, and at the Institute of Astronomy in Prague by the Czech ASCR M100031242 grant. I also acknowledge support from the Polish NCN grant UMO-2011/01/B/ST9/05439.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, ul. Bartycka 18, 00-716, Warszawa, Poland

    Marek A. Abramowicz

  2. Physics Department, Institute of Astronomy (Prague), Silesian University, Opava, The Czech Republic

    Marek A. Abramowicz

  3. Department of Physics, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Marek A. Abramowicz

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Correspondence to Marek A. Abramowicz .

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  1. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Praha 8, Czech Republic

    Jiří Bičák

  2. Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Praha 8, Czech Republic

    Tomáš Ledvinka

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Abramowicz, M.A. (2014). The Astrophysical Signatures of Black Holes: The Horizon, The ISCO, The Ergosphere and The Light Circle. In: Bičák, J., Ledvinka, T. (eds) General Relativity, Cosmology and Astrophysics. Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 177. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06349-2_24

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