Testing the black hole no-hair theorem with Galactic Center stellar orbits

Qi, H.; O’Shaughnessy, R.; Brady, P. R.

doi:10.1103/physrevd.103.084006

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…This should be useful in particular considering the challenging task of detecting the MBH spin via measuring the Lense-Thirring precession, which is the next great milestone in the field. Due to the smallness of the Lense-Thirring precession, it is of vital importance to examine how it interferes with other effects, and to explore how it can be separated from them (Wex & Kopeikin 1999;Merritt 2013;Zhang et al 2015;Yu et al 2016;Grould et al 2017;Waisberg et al 2018;Qi et al 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On secular timescales, this concerns in particular other precession effects such as the Schwarzschild and Lense-Thirring precessions. The latter is caused by the frame-dragging due to the spin of the black hole (Wex & Kopeikin 1999;Merritt 2013;Zhang et al 2015;Yu et al 2016;Grould et al 2017;Waisberg et al 2018;Qi et al 2021). In contrast to the Schwarzschild precession, the spin generally precesses the orbit within its orbital plane as well as out of its orbital plane.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The dark mass signature in the orbit of S2

Heißel

Paumard

Perrin

et al. 2022

A&A

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Context. The Schwarzschild precession of star S2, which orbits the massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, has recently been detected with the result of ∼12 arcmin per orbit. The same study also improved the 1σ upper bound on a possibly present dark continuous extended mass distribution (e.g. faint stars, stellar remnants, stellar mass black holes, or dark matter) within the orbit of S2 to ∼4000 M⊙. The secular (i.e. net) effect of an extended mass onto a stellar orbit is known as mass precession, and it runs counter to the Schwarzschild precession. Aims. We explore a strategy for how the Schwarzschild and mass precessions can be separated from each other despite their secular interference, by pinpointing their signatures within a single orbit. From these insights, we then seek to assess the prospects for improving the dark mass constraints in the coming years. Methods. We analysed the dependence of the osculating orbital elements and of the observables on true anomaly, and we compared these functions for models with and without extended mass. We then translated the maximum astrometric impacts within one orbit to detection thresholds given hypothetical data of different accuracies. These theoretical investigations were then supported and complemented by an extensive mock-data fitting analysis. Results. We have four main results. 1. While the mass precession almost exclusively impacts the orbit in the apocentre half, the Schwarzschild precession almost exclusively impacts it in the pericentre half, allowing for a clear separation of the effects. 2. Data that are limited to the pericentre half are not sensitive to a dark mass, while data limited to the apocentre half are, but only to a limited extent. 3. A full orbit of data is required to substantially constrain a dark mass. 4. For a full orbit of astrometric and spectroscopic data, the astrometric component in the pericentre halff plays the stronger role in constraining the dark mass than the astrometric data in the apocentre half. Furthermore, we determine the 1σ dark mass detection thresholds given different datasets on one full orbit. In particular, with a full orbit of data of 50 microarcsec (VLTI/GRAVITY) and 10 km s−1 (VLT/SINFONI) precision, the 1σ bound would improve to ∼1000 M⊙, for example. Conclusions. The current upper dark mass bound of ∼4000 M⊙ has mainly been obtained from a combination of GRAVITY and VLT/NACO astrometric data, as well as from SINFONI spectroscopic data, where the GRAVITY data were limited to the pericentre half. From our results 3 and 4, we know that all components were thereby crucial, but also that the GRAVITY data were dominant in the astrometric components in constraining the dark mass. From results 1 and 2, we deduce that a future population of the apocentre half with GRAVITY data points will substantially further improve the dark mass sensitivity of the dataset, and we note that at the time of publication, we already entered this regime. In the context of the larger picture, our analysis demonstrates how precession effects that interfere on secular timescales can clearly be distinguished from each other based on their distinct astrometric signatures within a single orbit. The extension of our analysis to the Lense-Thirring precession should thus be of value in order to assess future spin detection prospects for the galactic centre massive black hole.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dark mass signature in the orbit of S2

Heißel

Paumard

Perrin

et al. 2022

A&A

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“…This was recently shown in Ref. [18], which demonstrated with a Markov chain Monte Carlo method that a single stellar orbit can in principle measure these four parameters. Here we give an explicit analytic demonstration of how this additional information is contained within a single star's orbit.…”

Section: Shifts and Half-shiftsmentioning

confidence: 76%

“…Therefore, we should understand how we can test the no-hair theorem with just one star. A recent paper suggests a way to test the no-hair theorem using one star by a Markov chain Monte Carlo method using future measurements of stellar orbits [18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Stellar Orbits and the Sgr A$^*$ Quadrupole Moment

Alush¹,

Stone²

2022

Preprint

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The "no-hair" theorem can, in principle, be tested at the center of the Milky Way by measuring the spin and the quadrupole moment of Sgr A * with the orbital precession of S-stars, measured over their full periods. Contrary to the original method, we show why it is possible to test the no-hair theorem using observations from only a single star, by measuring precession angles over a half-orbit. There are observational and theoretical reasons to expect S-stars to spin rapidly, and we have quantified the effect of stellar spin, via spin-curvature coupling (the leading-order manifestation of the Mathisson-Papapetrou-Dixon equations), on future quadrupole measurements. We find that they will typically suffer from errors of order a few percentage points, but for some orbital parameters, the error can be much higher. We re-examine the more general problem of astrophysical noise sources that may impede future quadrupole measurements, and find that a judicious choice of measurable precession angles can often eliminate individual noise sources. We have derived optimal combinations of observables to eliminate the large noise source of mass precession, the novel noise of spin-curvature coupling due to stellar spin, and the more complicated noise source arising from transient quadrupole moments in the stellar potential.

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“…Along this direction, a lot of works have been already carried out. For instance, testing the no-hair theorem with Srg A* [43,44], the studies of a black hole with dark energy interaction [45] and surrounded by dark matter [46][47][48][49][50], testing GR [51,52], fitting of the orbital motion of S0-2 star in different theories [53][54][55][56][57], etc.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints on self-dual black hole in loop quantum gravity with S0-2 star in the Galactic Center

Yan¹,

Wu²,

Liu³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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One of remarkable features of loop quantum gravity (LQG) is that it can provide elegant resolutions to both the black hole and big bang singularities. In the mini-superspace approach based on the polymerization procedure in LQG, a self-dual black hole metric which is effective and regular is constructed. It modifies the Schwarzschild spacetime by the polymeric function P , purely due to the geometric quantum effects from LQG. In this paper, we consider its effects on the orbital signatures of S0-2 star orbiting Sgr A* in the central region of our Milky Way, and compare it with the publicly available astrometric and spectroscopic data, including the astrometric positions, the radial velocities, and the orbital procession for the S0-2 star. We perform a Monte Carlo Markov Chain (MCMC) simulation to probe the possible LQG effects on the orbit of S0-2 star. We do not find any significant evidence of the self-dual spacetime arsing from LQG and thus place an upper bound on the polymeric function P < 0.039 at 95% confidence level. This bound leads to a constraint on the polymeric parameter δ of LQG to be δ < 1.7.

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Testing the black hole no-hair theorem with Galactic Center stellar orbits

Cited by 13 publications

References 69 publications

The dark mass signature in the orbit of S2

The dark mass signature in the orbit of S2

Revisiting Stellar Orbits and the Sgr A$^*$ Quadrupole Moment

Constraints on self-dual black hole in loop quantum gravity with S0-2 star in the Galactic Center

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