Appearance of an infalling star in black holes with multiple photon spheres

Abstract

Photon spheres play a pivotal role in the imaging of luminous objects near black holes. In this paper, we examine observational appearances of a star freely falling in hairy black holes, which can possess one or two photon spheres outside the event horizon. When there exists a single photon sphere, the total luminosity measured by distant observers decreases exponentially with time at late times. Due to successive arrivals of photons orbiting around the photon sphere different times, a specific observer would see a series of light flashes with decreasing intensity, which share a similar frequency content. Whereas in the case with two photon spheres, photons temporarily trapped between the photon spheres can cause a peak of the total luminosity, which is followed by a slow exponential decay, at late times. In addition, these photons lead to one more series of light flashes seen by the specific observer.