Event Horizon Telescope observations as probes for quantum structure of astrophysical black holes
Abstract
The need for a consistent quantum evolution for black holes has led to proposals that their semiclassical description is modified not just near the singularity, but at horizon or larger scales. If such modifications extend beyond the horizon, they influence regions accessible to distant observeration. Natural candidates for these modifications behave like metric fluctuations, with characteristic length and time scales set by the horizon radius. In this study, we investigate the possibility of using the Event Horizon Telescope to observe these effects, if they have a strength sufficient to make quantum evolution consistent with unitarity. We find that such quantum fluctuations can introduce a strong time dependence for the shape and size of the shadow that a black hole casts on its surrounding emission. For the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, detecting the rapid time variability of its shadow will require non-imaging timing techniques. However, for the much larger black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy, a variable black-hole shadow, if present with these parameters, would be readily observable in the individual snapshots that will be obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope.
- Authors:
-
- Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
- Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ (United States)
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP); Foundational Questions Institute; National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1600760
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1433749
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0011702; FQXi-RFP-1507; NNX14AB48G; AST 1312034
- Resource Type:
- Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Name:
- Physical Review D
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Volume: 97; Journal Issue: 8; Journal ID: ISSN 2470-0010
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; Quantum gravity; Astronomical black holes
Citation Formats
Giddings, Steven B., and Psaltis, Dimitrios. Event Horizon Telescope observations as probes for quantum structure of astrophysical black holes. United States: N. p., 2018.
Web. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.084035.
Giddings, Steven B., & Psaltis, Dimitrios. Event Horizon Telescope observations as probes for quantum structure of astrophysical black holes. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.084035
Giddings, Steven B., and Psaltis, Dimitrios. Thu .
"Event Horizon Telescope observations as probes for quantum structure of astrophysical black holes". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.084035. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1600760.
@article{osti_1600760,
title = {Event Horizon Telescope observations as probes for quantum structure of astrophysical black holes},
author = {Giddings, Steven B. and Psaltis, Dimitrios},
abstractNote = {The need for a consistent quantum evolution for black holes has led to proposals that their semiclassical description is modified not just near the singularity, but at horizon or larger scales. If such modifications extend beyond the horizon, they influence regions accessible to distant observeration. Natural candidates for these modifications behave like metric fluctuations, with characteristic length and time scales set by the horizon radius. In this study, we investigate the possibility of using the Event Horizon Telescope to observe these effects, if they have a strength sufficient to make quantum evolution consistent with unitarity. We find that such quantum fluctuations can introduce a strong time dependence for the shape and size of the shadow that a black hole casts on its surrounding emission. For the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, detecting the rapid time variability of its shadow will require non-imaging timing techniques. However, for the much larger black hole in the center of the M87 galaxy, a variable black-hole shadow, if present with these parameters, would be readily observable in the individual snapshots that will be obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevD.97.084035},
journal = {Physical Review D},
number = 8,
volume = 97,
place = {United States},
year = {2018},
month = {4}
}
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record
Other availability
Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal
Cited by: 6 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science
Web of Science
Save to My Library
You must Sign In or Create an Account in order to save documents to your library.
Works referenced in this record:
Particle creation by black holes
journal, August 1975
- Hawking, S. W.
- Communications In Mathematical Physics, Vol. 43, Issue 3
Particle creation by black holes
journal, June 1976
- Hawking, S. W.
- Communications in Mathematical Physics, Vol. 46, Issue 2
The information paradox: a pedagogical introduction
journal, October 2009
- Mathur, Samir D.
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 26, Issue 22
Black holes, quantum information, and the foundations of physics
journal, April 2013
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physics Today, Vol. 66, Issue 4
Jerusalem lectures on black holes and quantum information
journal, February 2016
- Harlow, D.
- Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 88, Issue 1
Black holes and massive remnants
journal, August 1992
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 46, Issue 4
Gravitational vacuum condensate stars
journal, June 2004
- Mazur, P. O.; Mottola, E.
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 101, Issue 26
Black holes: complementarity or firewalls?
journal, February 2013
- Almheiri, Ahmed; Marolf, Donald; Polchinski, Joseph
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2013, Issue 2
Cool horizons for entangled black holes
journal, August 2013
- Maldacena, J.; Susskind, L.
- Fortschritte der Physik, Vol. 61, Issue 9
Possible observational windows for quantum effects from black holes
journal, December 2014
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 90, Issue 12
Models for unitary black hole disintegration
journal, February 2012
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 85, Issue 4
Black holes, quantum information, and unitary evolution
journal, June 2012
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 85, Issue 12
Nonviolent nonlocality
journal, September 2013
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 88, Issue 6
Observational strong gravity and quantum black hole structure
journal, October 2016
- Giddings, Steven B.
- International Journal of Modern Physics D, Vol. 25, Issue 12
Probes and Tests of Strong-Field Gravity with Observations in the Electromagnetic Spectrum
journal, November 2008
- Psaltis, Dimitrios
- Living Reviews in Relativity, Vol. 11, Issue 1
Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger
journal, February 2016
- Abbott, B. P.; Abbott, R.; Abbott, T. D.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 6
Gravitational wave tests of quantum modifications to black hole structure—with post-GW150914 update
journal, November 2016
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 33, Issue 23
Systematic study of event horizons and pathologies of parametrically deformed Kerr spacetimes
journal, June 2013
- Johannsen, Tim
- Physical Review D, Vol. 87, Issue 12
Stability of a Schwarzschild Singularity
journal, November 1957
- Regge, Tullio; Wheeler, John A.
- Physical Review, Vol. 108, Issue 4
Testing the No-Hair Theorem with Observations in the Electromagnetic Spectrum. ii. Black hole Images
journal, June 2010
- Johannsen, Tim; Psaltis, Dimitrios
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 718, Issue 1
Shape and position of the shadow in the δ = 2 Tomimatsu–Sato spacetime
journal, September 2010
- Bambi, Cosimo; Yoshida, Naoki
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 27, Issue 20
Shadow of Kerr-Taub-NUT black hole
journal, December 2012
- Abdujabbarov, Ahmadjon; Atamurotov, Farruh; Kucukakca, Yusuf
- Astrophysics and Space Science, Vol. 344, Issue 2
Shadow of a Kaluza-Klein rotating dilaton black hole
journal, February 2013
- Amarilla, Leonardo; Eiroa, Ernesto F.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 87, Issue 4
Astrophysical imaging of Kerr black holes with scalar hair
journal, October 2016
- Vincent, F. H.; Gourgoulhon, E.; Herdeiro, C.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 94, Issue 8
Black holes as mirrors: quantum information in random subsystems
journal, September 2007
- Hayden, Patrick; Preskill, John
- Journal of High Energy Physics, Vol. 2007, Issue 09
Quantum information transfer and models for black hole mechanics
journal, March 2013
- Giddings, Steven B.; Shi, Yinbo
- Physical Review D, Vol. 87, Issue 6
Nonviolent information transfer from black holes: A field theory parametrization
journal, July 2013
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 88, Issue 2
Effective field theory models for nonviolent information transfer from black holes
journal, June 2014
- Giddings, Steven B.; Shi, Yinbo
- Physical Review D, Vol. 89, Issue 12
Average entropy of a subsystem
journal, August 1993
- Page, Don N.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 71, Issue 9
Information in black hole radiation
journal, December 1993
- Page, Don N.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 71, Issue 23
Statistical physics of black holes as quantum-mechanical systems
journal, November 2013
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 88, Issue 10
Mining energy from a black hole by strings
journal, May 2001
- Frolov, V. P.; Fursaev, D. V.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 63, Issue 12
Cosmic Strings and Energy Mining from Black Holes
journal, August 2002
- Frolov, Valeri
- International Journal of Modern Physics A, Vol. 17, Issue 20
Black hole evaporation along macroscopic strings
journal, August 1994
- Lawrence, Albion; Martinec, Emil
- Physical Review D, Vol. 50, Issue 4
Tensile Strength and the Mining of Black Holes
journal, November 2013
- Brown, Adam R.
- Physical Review Letters, Vol. 111, Issue 21
Modulated Hawking radiation and a nonviolent channel for information release
journal, November 2014
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Physics Letters B, Vol. 738
A Ray-Tracing Algorithm for Spinning Compact Object Spacetimes with Arbitrary Quadrupole Moments. i. Quasi-Kerr Black Holes
journal, December 2011
- Psaltis, Dimitrios; Johannsen, Tim
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 745, Issue 1
GRay: A MASSIVELY PARALLEL GPU-BASED CODE FOR RAY TRACING IN RELATIVISTIC SPACETIMES
journal, October 2013
- Chan, Chi-kwan; Psaltis, Dimitrios; Özel, Feryal
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 777, Issue 1
THE POWER OF IMAGING: CONSTRAINING THE PLASMA PROPERTIES OF GRMHD SIMULATIONS USING EHT OBSERVATIONS OF Sgr A*
journal, January 2015
- Chan, Chi-Kwan; Psaltis, Dimitrios; Özel, Feryal
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 799, Issue 1
Testing the No-Hair Theorem with Event Horizon Telescope Observations of Sagittarius a*
journal, February 2014
- Broderick, Avery E.; Johannsen, Tim; Loeb, Abraham
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 784, Issue 1
Millimeter Flares and vlbi Visibilities from Relativistic Simulations of Magnetized Accretion onto the Galactic Center Black hole
journal, September 2009
- Dexter, Jason; Agol, Eric; Fragile, P. Chris
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 703, Issue 2
THE SUBMILLIMETER BUMP IN Sgr A* FROM RELATIVISTIC MHD SIMULATIONS
journal, June 2010
- Dexter, Jason; Agol, Eric; Fragile, P. Chris
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 717, Issue 2
Radiative Models of sgr a* from Grmhd Simulations
journal, November 2009
- Mościbrodzka, Monika; Gammie, Charles F.; Dolence, Joshua C.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 706, Issue 1
Observational appearance of inefficient accretion flows and jets in 3D GRMHD simulations: Application to Sagittarius A*
journal, October 2014
- Mościbrodzka, Monika; Falcke, Heino; Shiokawa, Hotaka
- Astronomy & Astrophysics, Vol. 570
Measuring Distance and Properties of the Milky Way’s Central Supermassive Black Hole with Stellar Orbits
journal, December 2008
- Ghez, A. M.; Salim, S.; Weinberg, N. N.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 689, Issue 2
Monitoring Stellar Orbits Around the Massive Black hole in the Galactic Center
journal, February 2009
- Gillessen, S.; Eisenhauer, F.; Trippe, S.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 692, Issue 2
The Black hole mass in m87 from Gemini/Nifs Adaptive Optics Observations
journal, February 2011
- Gebhardt, Karl; Adams, Joshua; Richstone, Douglas
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 729, Issue 2
Event-horizon-scale structure in the supermassive black hole candidate at the Galactic Centre
journal, September 2008
- Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Weintroub, Jonathan; Rogers, Alan E. E.
- Nature, Vol. 455, Issue 7209
Jet-Launching Structure Resolved Near the Supermassive Black Hole in M87
journal, September 2012
- Doeleman, S. S.; Fish, V. L.; Schenck, D. E.
- Science, Vol. 338, Issue 6105
Imaging an Event Horizon: Mitigation of Source Variability of Sagittarius a*
journal, February 2016
- Lu, Ru-Sen; Roelofs, Freek; Fish, Vincent L.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 817, Issue 2
Theory and Simulations of Refractive Substructure in Resolved Scatter-Broadened Images
journal, June 2015
- Johnson, Michael D.; Gwinn, Carl R.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 805, Issue 2
Detecting Flaring Structures in Sagittarius a* with High-Frequency vlbi
journal, March 2009
- Doeleman, Sheperd S.; Fish, Vincent L.; Broderick, Avery E.
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 695, Issue 1
Works referencing / citing this record:
Probing an Extended Uncertainty Principle black hole with gravitational lensings
journal, June 2019
- Lu, Xu; Xie, Yi
- Modern Physics Letters A, Vol. 34, Issue 20
Generalized no-hair theorems without horizons
journal, June 2019
- Barceló, Carlos; Carballo-Rubio, Raúl; Liberati, Stefano
- Classical and Quantum Gravity, Vol. 36, Issue 13
Modified gravity black hole lensing observables in weak and strong field of gravity
journal, December 2018
- Izmailov, R. N.; Karimov, R. Kh; Zhdanov, E. R.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 483, Issue 3
Predictions of the pseudo-complex theory of Gravity for EHT observations – II: theory and predictions
journal, April 2019
- Hess, P. O.; Boller, Th; Müller, A.
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Vol. 485, Issue 1
Black holes in the quantum universe
journal, November 2019
- Giddings, Steven B.
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol. 377, Issue 2161
Self-consistent description of a spherically-symmetric gravitational collapse
journal, December 2019
- Terno, Daniel R.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 100, Issue 12
Phenomenological aspects of black holes beyond general relativity
journal, December 2018
- Carballo-Rubio, Raúl; Di Filippo, Francesco; Liberati, Stefano
- Physical Review D, Vol. 98, Issue 12
Massive and charged scalar field in Kerr-Newman spacetime: Absorption and superradiance
journal, February 2019
- Benone, Carolina L.; Crispino, Luís C. B.
- Physical Review D, Vol. 99, Issue 4
Deflection Angle of Photons through Dark Matter by Black Holes and Wormholes Using Gauss–Bonnet Theorem
journal, May 2019
- Övgün, Ali
- Universe, Vol. 5, Issue 5
Kerr Black Holes within a Modified Theory of Gravity
journal, August 2019
- Hess, Peter O.; López-Moreno, Enrique
- Universe, Vol. 5, Issue 9
Tests of the Kerr Hypothesis with GRS 1915+105 Using Different relxill Flavors
journal, October 2019
- Zhang, Yuexin; Abdikamalov, Askar B.; Ayzenberg, Dimitry
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 884, Issue 2
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. V. Physical Origin of the Asymmetric Ring
journal, April 2019
- Akiyama, Kazunori; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 875, Issue 1
First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. VI. The Shadow and Mass of the Central Black Hole
journal, April 2019
- Akiyama, Kazunori; Alberdi, Antxon; Alef, Walter
- The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 875, Issue 1