http://arxiv.org/abs/1801.00867
It is commonly thought that the final product of gravitational collapse is a black hole. Nevertheless, theoretical studies have not yet provided a final answer to the question whether black holes are the only possible outcome or whether naked singularities are also allowed. Observational tests may thus represent a complementary approach. In the present paper, we consider the Janis-Newman-Winicour metric, which describes a rotating source with a surface-like naked singularity. We calculate iron line shapes in the reflection spectrum of a putative disk around a Janis-Newman-Winicour singularity and we compare our results with the iron line shapes expected in the spectrum of a Kerr black hole. While it is difficult to distinguish the two spacetimes from the iron line shape in general, it seems that Janis-Newman-Winicour singularities cannot mimic fast-rotating Kerr black holes observed at a low or moderate inclination angle. Our analysis thus suggests that available observations of specific sources may already rule out Janis-Newman-Winicour singularities as alternative to Kerr black holes.
H. Liu, M. Zhou and C. Bambi
Thu, 4 Jan 2018
27/44
Comments: 9 pages, 4 figures