Testing Horndeski Gravity from EHT Observational Results for Rotating Black Holes

Abstract

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration recently unveiled the first image of the supermassive black hole M87*, which exhibited a ring of angular diameter θ d = 42 ± 3 μas, a circularity deviation of ΔC ≤ 0.1, and also inferred a black hole mass of M = (6.5 ± 0.7) × 109 M ⊙. This provides a new window onto tests of theories of gravity in the strong-field regime, including probes of violations of the no-hair theorem. It is widely believed that the Kerr metric describes astrophysical black holes, as encapsulated in the critical but untested no-hair theorem. Modeling Horndeski gravity black holes—with an additional hair parameter h besides the mass M and spin a of the Kerr black hole—as the supermassive black hole M87*, we observe that to be a viable astrophysical black hole candidate, the EHT result constrains the (a, h) parameter space. However, a systematic bias analysis indicates that rotating Horndeski black hole shadows may or may not capture Kerr black hole shadows, depending on the parameter values; the latter is the case over a substantial part of the constrained parameter space, allowing Horndeski gravity and general relativity to be distinguishable in the said space, and opening up the possibility of potential modifications to the Kerr metric.