Effects of hair on the image of a rotating black hole illuminated by a thin accretion disk

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the shadow and optical appearance of the hairy Kerr black hole illuminated by a thin accretion disk, the materials of which outside the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) move on the equatorial circular orbit, while inside the ISCO they quickly plunge into the black hole. The deformation parameter $\alpha$ and hair parameter $l_o$ are found to influence the motions of accretion as well as the redshift effect of the photon, such that they significantly affect the shadow and image of the hairy Kerr black hole. Especially, these two parameters have competing effects on the size of the black hole's shadow, and significantly increase the width of photon ring. This study provides a preliminary theoretical prediction that the image of the hairy Kerr black hole, especially the photon ring structure, may be used to constrain the hair parameters with future high-precision astronomical observation.