Self-Lensing Flares from Black Hole Binaries: Observing Black Hole Shadows via Light Curve Tomography
Abstract
Supermassive black hole (BH) binaries are thought to produce self-lensing flares (SLFs) when the two BHs are aligned with the line of sight. If the binary orbit is observed nearly edge-on, we find a distinct feature in the light curve imprinted by the relativistic shadow around the background ("source") BH. We study this feature by ray tracing in a binary model and predict that 1% of the current binary candidates could show this feature. Our BH tomography method proposed here could make it possible to extract BH shadows that are spatially unresolvable by high-resolution very long base line interferometry (VLBI).
- Publication:
-
Physical Review Letters
- Pub Date:
- May 2022
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.191101
- arXiv:
- arXiv:2112.05829
- Bibcode:
- 2022PhRvL.128s1101D
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena;
- General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
- E-Print:
- 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Submitted to journal