Shadow images of Kerr-like wormholes

Abstract

Investigations of shadows of astrophysical entities constitute a major source of insight into the evolution of compact objects. Such effects depend on the nature of the compact object and arise on account of the strong gravitational lensing that casts a shadow on the bright background. We consider the Kerr-like wormhole spacetime (Phys.\ Rev.\ D 97:024040, 2018), which is a modification of the Kerr black hole that degenerates into wormholes for nonzero values of the deviation parameter $\lambda^2$. The results suggest that the Kerr spacetime can reproduce far away from the throat of the wormhole. We obtain the shapes of the shadow for the Kerr-like wormholes and discuss the effect of the spin $a$, the inclination angle $\theta_0$, and the deviation parameter $\lambda^2$ on the size and nature of the shadow. As a consequence, it is discovered that the shadow is distorted due to the spin as well as the deviation parameter and the radius of the shadow decreases with $\lambda^2$ if the ADM mass of the Kerr-like wormholes is considered.