Black hole shadow as a <i>standard ruler</i> in cosmology
Abstract
Abstract Advancements in the black hole shadow observations may allow us not only to investigate physics in the strong gravity regime, but also to use them in cosmological studies. In this paper, we propose to use the shadow of supermassive black holes as a standard ruler for cosmological applications assuming the black hole mass can be determined independently. First, observations at low redshift distances can be used to constrain the Hubble constant independently. Secondly, the angular size of shadows of high redshift black holes is increased due to cosmic expansion and may also be reachable with future observations. This would allow us to probe the cosmic expansion history for the redshift range elusive to other distance measurements. Additionally, shadow can be used to estimate the mass of black holes at high redshift, assuming that cosmology is known.