Testing Chern-Simons gravity with black holes?

Abstract

We investigate the possibility to distinguish the small-coupling, slow-rotation black hole solution of Chern-Simons (CS) gravity from the Kerr solution. We develop simulations of electromagnetic observables in the vicinity of CS and Kerr black holes. We show that the typical relative observable difference between CS and Kerr spacetimes is of the order of 0.1% thus beyond reach of current or near-future instruments.