Horizon-scale images of black holes (BHs) and their shadows have opened an unprecedented window onto tests of gravity and fundamental physics in the strong-field regime. We consider a wide range of well-motivated deviations from classical general relativity (GR) BH solutions, and constrain them using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations of Sagittarius A ∗ (Sgr A ∗ ), connecting the size of the bright ring of emission to that of the underlying BH shadow and exploiting high-precision measurements of Sgr A ∗ ’s mass-to-distance ratio. The scenarios we consider, and whose fundamental parameters we constrain, include various regular BHs, string-inspired space-times, violations of the no-hair theorem driven by additional fields, alternative theories of gravity, novel fundamental physics frameworks, and BH mimickers including well-motivated wormhole and naked singularity space-times. We demonstrate that the EHT image of Sgr A ∗ places particularly stringent constraints on models predicting a shadow size larger than that of a Schwarzschild BH of a given mass, with the resulting limits in some cases surpassing cosmological ones. Our results are among the first tests of fundamental physics from the shadow of Sgr A ∗ and, while the latter appears to be in excellent agreement with the predictions of GR, we have shown that a number of well-motivated alternative scenarios, including BH mimickers, are far from being ruled out at present.

In this paper, we discuss the effects of nonlinear electrodynamics (NED) on non-rotating black holes, parametrized by the field coupling parameter β and magnetic charge parameter P in detail. Particularly, we survey a large range of observables and physical properties of the magnetically charged black hole, including the thermodynamic properties, observational appearance, quasinormal modes and absorption cross sections. Initially, we show that the NED black hole is always surrounded by an event horizon and any magnetic charge is permissible. We then show that the black hole gets colder with increasing charge. Investigating the heat capacity, we see that the black hole is thermally stable between points of phase transition. Introducing a generalized uncertainty principle (GUP) with a quantum gravity parameter λ extends the range of the stable region, but the effect on temperature is negligible. Then we compute the deflection angle at the weak field limit, by the Gauss-Bonnet theorem and the geodesic equation, and find that even at the first order, the magnetic charge has a contribution due to the “field mass” term. Small changes of the charge contributes greatly to the paths of null geodesics due to the P ² dependence of the horizon radius. Using a ray-tracing code, we simulate the observational appearance of a NED black hole under different emission profiles, thin disk and spherical accretion. We find that the parameter P has a very strong effect on the observed shadow radius, in agreement with the deflection angle calculations. We finally consider quasinormal modes under massless scalar perturbations of the black hole and the greybody factor. We find that the charge introduces a slight difference in the fundamental frequency of the emitted waveform. We find that the greybody factor of the NED black hole is strongly steepened by the introduction of increasing charge. To present observational constrains, we show that the magnetic charge of the M87^* black hole is between 0 ≤ P ≤ 0.024 in units of M, in agreement with the idea that real astrophysical black holes are mostly neutral. We also find that LIGO/VIRGO and LISA could detect NED black hole perturbations from BHs with masses between 5 M _☉ and 8.0 · 10⁸ M _☉. We finally show that for black holes with masses detected with LIGO so far, charged NED black holes would deviate from Schwarzschild by 5∼10 Hz in their fundamental frequencies.

In this study, we found a new traversable wormhole solution in the framework of a bumblebee gravity model. With these types of models, the Lorentz symmetry violation arises from the dynamics of a bumblebee vector field that is nonminimally coupled with gravity. To this end, we checked the wormhole’s flare-out and energy (null, weak, and strong) conditions. We then studied the deflection angle of light in the weak limit approximation using the Gibbons-Werner method. In particular, we show that the bumblebee gravity effect leads to a nontrivial global topology of the wormhole spacetime. By using the Gauss-Bonnet theorem (GBT), it is shown that the obtained non-asymptotically flat wormhole solution yields a topological term in the deflection angle of light. This term is proportional to the coupling constant, but independent from the impact factor parameter. Significantly, we showed that the bumblebee wormhole solutions, under specific conditions, support the normal matter wormhole geometries.

In this paper the deflection angle of light by a rotating Teo wormhole spacetime is calculated in the weak limit approximation. We mainly focus on the weak deflection angle by revealing the gravitational lensing as a partially global topological effect. We apply the Gauss-Bonnet theorem (GBT) to the optical geometry osculating the Teo-Randers wormhole optical geometry to calculate the deflection angle. Furthermore we find the same result using the standard geodesic method. We have found that the deflection angle can be written as a sum of two terms, namely the first term is proportional to the throat of the wormhole and depends entirely on the geometry, while the second term is proportional to the spin angular momentum parameter of the wormhole. A direct observation using lensing can shed light and potentially test the nature of rotating wormholes by comparing with the black holes systems.

In this paper, using the recent method proposed by Ono, Ishihara and Asada (OIA) who extend the idea of Gibbons and Werner to the stationary and axisymmetric case, we apply the Gauss-Bonnet theorem to the optical metric of the non-rotating and rotating Damour-Solodukhin wormholes spacetimes to study the weak gravitational lensing by these objects. Furthermore, we study the strong gravitational lensing by the nonrotating Damour-Solodukhin wormholes using the Bozza’s method to see the differences between the weak lensing and the strong lensing. We demonstrate the relation between the strong deflection angle and quasinormal modes of the Damour-Solodukhin wormholes. Interestingly it is found that the wormhole parameter $\lambda$, affects the deflection of light in strong and weak limits compared to the previous studies of gravitational lensing by Schwarzschild black holes. Hence, the results provide a unique tool to shed light on the possible existence of wormholes.