Probing Quadratic Gravity with the Event Horizon Telescope

Understand

Quadratic gravity constitutes a prototypical example of a perturbatively renormalizable quantum theory of the gravitational interactions.

• In this work, we construct the associated phase space of static, spherically symmetric, and asymptotically flat spacetimes.
• It is found that the Schwarzschild geometry is embedded in a rich solution space comprising horizonless, naked singularities and wormhole solutions.
• Characteristically, the deformed solutions follow the Schwarzschild solution up outside of the photon sphere while they differ substantially close to the center of gravity.