Possible Alternatives to the Supermassive Black Hole at the Galactic Center

• Published in: Journal of astrophysics and astronomy Vol. 36; no. 4; pp. 539 - 553
• Main Author: Zakharov, A. F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New Delhi Springer India 01.12.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Approximation; Astronomy; Astrophysics; Astrophysics and Astroparticles; Black holes; Black holes (astronomy); Data interpretation; Gravitation; Gravitational fields; Gravity; Interferometry; Mathematical analysis; Monitoring; Observations and Techniques; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Radio telescopes; Review; Shadows; Stars & galaxies; gravitational lensing; large telescopes; supermassive black holes; the Galactic Center; Black holes; VLBI interferometry
• ISSN: 0250-6335; 0973-7758
• DOI: 10.1007/s12036-015-9345-x

Now there are two basic observational techniques to investigate a gravitational potential at the Galactic Center, namely, (a) monitoring the orbits of bright stars near the Galactic Center to reconstruct a gravitational potential; (b) measuring the size and shape of shadows around black hole giving an alternative possibility to evaluate black hole parameters in mm-band with VLBI-technique. At the moment, one can use a small relativistic correction approach for stellar orbit analysis (however, in the future the approximation will not be precise enough due to enormous progress of observational facilities) while for smallest structure analysis in VLBI observations one really needs a strong gravitational field approximation. We discuss results of observations, their conventional interpretations, tensions between observations and models and possible hints for a new physics from the observational data and tensions between observations and interpretations. We discuss an opportunity to use a Schwarzschild metric for data interpretation or we have to use more exotic models such as Reissner–Nordstrom or Schwarzschild–de-Sitter metrics for better fits.