MG14 - Talk detail

Back to previous page

 Participant

Institution

Session

Accepted

Yes

Order

Time

Talk

Title

Abstract

Systems consisting of a pulsar and a black hole are believed to be the holy grail of gravity experiments. They will provide us unprecedented opportunities to test general relativity (GR) and in particular its prediction of black hole physics. In this talk, I will present an overview of the potential gravity experiments that can be carried out with pulsar timing observations, once a pulsar--black hole system is discovered. I will focus on two scenarios: a binary pulsar with a stellar-mass black hole companion, and a pulsar in orbit with the super-massive black hole in our Galaxy, the Sgr A*. It will be shown that on both scenarios, one can expect to measure the mass, the spin, and even the quadrupole moment of the black hole with high precision. Those measurements will lead to direct tests of GR's cosmic censorship conjecture and no-hair theorem. I will also show that a pulsar--black hole system can improve our constrains on alternative theories of gravity even if they practically predict black holes identical to GR's. Specifically for the second scenario, I will briefly discuss how the test of no-hair theorem can be improved by combining pulsar experiments with other relevant efforts such as stellar astrometry and imaging the event horizon of Sgr A*.

Pdf file

Back to previous page