Lorentz violation signatures in the low-energy sector of Ho\v{r}ava gravity from black hole shadow observations

Abstract

In this paper, we use the Ho\v{r}ava gravity model and EHT observations of supermassive black holes (BHs) to investigate signatures of Lorentz violation in real astrophysical environments. The Lorentz violation in the rotating Ho\v{r}ava BH spacetime are confined to the strong gravitational field region, being induced by the BH's rotation. Due to the non-separability of the photon motion equations in this spacetime, we employed a numerical backward ray-tracing method to generate shadow images for various BH parameters. Subsequently, we extracted coordinate positions characterizing the shadow shape from high-pixel images to evaluate the parameter space of the BH. When evaluating M87*, Lorentz violation can occur with arbitrary strength. However, for Sgr A*, we can impose certain parameter constraints on Lorentz violation. These constraints depend on the BH's spin. If future observations confirm Sgr A*'s spin parameter less than 0.81 at maximum inclination, current EHT results would challenge general relativity and support Lorentz violation in low-energy regimes.