Shadow of a black hole and its utility

Madhav, Modumudi Sai (2018) Shadow of a black hole and its utility. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

PDF (MS dissertation of Modumudi Sai Madhav (12MS036)) 12MS036.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (2MB)

Abstract

Since the proposal of General Relativity, we had collected plenty of evidence for the existence of black holes, but it was circumstantial. The main discussion of this thesis is to theoretically compute the appearance of a black hole when observed directly (as predicted by the General theory of Relativity). One might ask if radiation cannot escape black holes, how is direct observation possible? Of course radiation cannot escape black holes, but if it were in front of a luminous background, it casts its shadow not just by being opaque but also by absorbing some radiation into it. What is observed is its shadow. This might be considered the closest we can get to actually observing a black hole. Scholars have found that properties of a black hole like charge and spin can in principle be measured from the shadow. Shadows are also useful in testing new theories of quantum gravity. We shall begin with the basic ideas behind construction of shadow, and construct one. We shall also see the effects of a new theory on the shadow.

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