Double shadow of a regular phantom black hole as photons couple to Weyl tensor

TL;DR

This paper investigates how photons coupled to the Weyl tensor create a double shadow in a regular phantom black hole, revealing new polarization-dependent propagation effects and potential observational signatures.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of double shadows caused by photon-Weyl tensor coupling in regular phantom black holes, a novel phenomenon not seen in non-coupled cases.

Findings

Photons with different polarizations follow distinct paths, producing double shadows.

The black hole's umbra size increases with phantom charge and decreases with coupling strength.

The penumbra's dependence on charge and coupling is opposite to that of the umbra.

Abstract

We have studied the shadow of a regular phantom black hole as photons couple to Weyl tensor. We find that the coupling yields that photons with different polarization directions propagate along different paths in the spacetime so that there exits double shadow for a black hole, which is quite different from that in the non-coupling case where only a single shadow emerges. The umbra of black hole increases with the phantom charge and decreases with the coupling strength. The dependence of the penumbra on the phantom charge and the coupling strength is converse to that of the umbra. Combining with the supermassive central object in our Galaxy, we estimated the shadow of the black hole as the photons couple to Weyl tensor. Our results show that the coupling brings richer behaviors of the propagation of coupled photon and the shadow of the black hole in the regular phantom black hole spacetime.