Perihelion precession and shadows near black holes and naked singularities

Abstract

It is now known that, apart from black holes, some naked singularities can also cast shadows which provide their possible observable signatures. We examine the relevant question here as to how to distinguish then these entities from each other, in terms of further physical signatures. We point out that black holes always admit timelike bound orbits having positive perihelion precession. Also, while a naked singularity with a photon sphere can cast a shadow, it could also admit positive perihelion precession for such orbits, thereby mimicking a black hole. This indicates that compact objects with photon spheres (shadows) always admit positive perihelion precession of timelike bound orbits around them. On the other hand, a naked singularity without a photon sphere could admit both positive and negative perihelion precession but need not have a shadow. In this paper, we construct a spacetime configuration which has a central naked singularity but no photon sphere, and it can give both shadow and a negative perihelion precession. Our results imply that, whereas the presence of a shadow and a positive perihelion precession implies either a black hole or a naked singularity, the presence of a shadow and a negative perihelion precession simultaneously would imply a naked singularity only. We discuss our results in the context of stellar motions (motion of the `S' stars) around the Sgr-A* galactic center.