Speaker
Description
A recently proposed interesting class of black hole mimickers are the so-called "black-bounce" spacetimes. In static spherical symmetry, a candidate spacetime was explored which neatly interpolates between a classical Schwarzschild black hole, a regular black hole, and a traversable wormhole depending on the value of an additional scalar metric parameter. Since this analysis, the discourse surrounding "black-bounce" spacetimes has been exported into many varied contexts, exploring qualitatively different physical and geometrical frameworks. These include spherical symmetry with dynamics, axisymmetry, models inspired by the Fan--Wang mass function, and finally the full family of charged rotating black-bounce spacetimes, analogous to the classical Kerr--Newman black holes. Beyond analysing the qualitative features of each of these candidate spacetimes and extracting astrophysical observables for observational astronomers, a new look at developing a minimally modified alternative theory of gravity where the black-bounce spacetimes are vacuum solutions is discussed.
