Appearance of Keplerian discs orbiting Kerr superspinars

TL;DR

This paper investigates the optical appearance of accretion discs around Kerr superspinars, highlighting how their silhouettes and disc appearances differ from black holes, potentially allowing observational distinction.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of the optical phenomena and silhouette differences of Kerr superspinars compared to black holes, considering various spin values and spacetime junctions.

Findings

Superspinar silhouettes differ significantly from black holes.

Disc appearance varies strongly with superspinar spin.

Self-illumination effects increase as superspinar spin approaches extremity.

Abstract

We study optical phenomena related to appearance of Keplerian accretion discs orbiting Kerr superspinars predicted by the string theory. The superspinar exterior is described by the standard Kerr naked singularity geometry breaking the black hole limit on the internal angular momentum (spin). We construct local photon escape cones for a variety of orbiting sources that enable to determine the superspinars silhouette in the case of distant observers. We show that the superspinar silhouette depends strongly on the assumed edge where the external Kerr spacetime is joined to the internal spacetime governed by the string theory and significantly differs from the black hole silhouette. The appearance of the accretion disc is strongly dependent on the value of the superspinar spin in both their shape and frequency shift profile. Apparent extension of the disc grows significantly with growing spin, while the frequency shift grows with descending spin. This behavior differs substantially from appearance of discs orbiting black holes enabling thus, at least in principle, to distinguish clearly the Kerr superspinars and black holes. In vicinity of a Kerr superspinar the non-escaped photons have to be separated to those captured by the superspinar and those being trapped in its strong gravitational field leading to self-illumination of the disc that could even influence its structure and causes self-reflection effect of radiation of the disc. The amount of trapped photons grows with descending of the superspinar spin. We thus can expect significant self-illumination effects in the field of Kerr superspinars with near-extreme spin $a \sim 1$.