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Can different black holes cast the same shadow?

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arxiv 2102.07034 v2 pith:UYBW5JND submitted 2021-02-13 gr-qc astro-ph.HEhep-th

classification gr-qcastro-ph.HEhep-th
keywords differentshadowclasssamecastcontainsexamplesgeometry
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abstract

We consider the following question: may two different black holes (BHs) cast exactly the same shadow? In spherical symmetry, we show the necessary and sufficient condition for a static BH to be shadow-degenerate with Schwarzschild is that the dominant photonsphere of both has the same impact parameter, when corrected for the (potentially) different redshift of comparable observers in the different spacetimes. Such shadow-degenerate geometries are classified into two classes. The first shadow-equivalent class contains metrics whose constant (areal) radius hypersurfaces are isometric to those of the Schwarzschild geometry, which is illustrated by the Simpson and Visser (SV) metric. The second shadow-degenerate class contains spacetimes with different redshift profiles and an explicit family of metrics within this class is presented. In the stationary, axi-symmetric case, we determine a sufficient condition for the metric to be shadow degenerate with Kerr for far-away observers. Again we provide two classes of examples. The first class contains metrics whose constant (Boyer-Lindquist-like) radius hypersurfaces are isometric to those of the Kerr geometry, which is illustrated by a rotating generalization of the SV metric, obtained by a modified Newman-Janis algorithm. The second class of examples pertains BHs that fail to have the standard north-south $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry, but nonetheless remain shadow degenerate with Kerr. The latter provides a sharp illustration that the shadow is not a probe of the horizon geometry. These examples illustrate that nonisometric BH spacetimes can cast the same shadow, albeit the lensing is generically different.

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Cited by 3 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score. Full citation record

  1. The existence and upper bound for stable photon spheres in static spherically symmetric black holes

    gr-qc 2025-08 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    For static spherical black holes with monotone m(r)/r^3, every stable photon sphere obeys r < 6M.

  2. Spinning generalizations of Majumdar-Papapetrou multi-black hole spacetimes: light rings, lensing and shadows

    gr-qc 2025-02 conditional novelty 6.0 of 10

    For the Teo-Wan two-black-hole spacetime, light rings merge and annihilate in pairs, giving total counts of 4, 6, or 8, and the shadows mimic double-Kerr.

  3. Spherically symmetric and static black bounces with multiple horizons, throats, and anti-throats in four dimensions

    gr-qc 2025-02 conditional novelty 5.0 of 10

    A new family of static, spherically symmetric black bounce spacetimes with multiple horizons, throats, and anti-throats is constructed and sourced by a partially phantom scalar field with nonlinear electrodynamics.

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