Testing black hole equatorial reflection symmetry using Sgr A* shadow images

Abstract

The recently released images of the supermassive black holes in the M87 galaxy and the galaxy of our own make probing black hole spacetimes and testing general relativity (GR) possible. The violation of equatorial reflection symmetry of black hole spacetimes is clearly a smoking gun of physics beyond GR. In this paper, we place constraints on the violation of black hole reflection symmetry using the bounds on the ring size of the $\mathrm{Sgr}\text{ }{\mathrm{A}}^{*}$ black hole images, which are consistent with the critical curve radius predicted in GR within $\ensuremath{\sim}10%$. Adopting a theory-agnostic framework, we consider a Kerr-like metric in which the violation of reflection symmetry is parametrized by a single parameter, without altering the multipoles of the black hole. The critical curves are always vertically symmetric due to the existence of hidden symmetry associated with the Killing tensor, even though the spacetime is reflection asymmetric. We find that the size of critical curves is sensitive to the amount of reflection symmetry being violated, and place the first constraints on the parameter space of the model using the $\mathrm{Sgr}\text{ }{\mathrm{A}}^{*}$ images.