Vitor Cardoso: Black Hole Physics

This volume gives a unified picture of the multifaceted subject of superradiance, with a focus on recent developments in the field, ranging from fundamental physics to astrophysics. The book covers all our current understanding on the physics of the amplification of waves by a medium, including classical effects such as the Cherenkov effect. The main body of the book deals with superradiance in black hole physics, with important applications in astrophysics and particle physics.

This is not my book, but I wrote the preface (in portuguese) for these Stephen Hawking BBC lectures, and it’s a cool text to read. The book covers important aspects of black hole physics, such as formation, their uniqueness properties and, naturally, Hawking evaporation.

This book, written in portuguese, is a voyage beginning with the notion of time and light, and ending on a black hole. Black holes are the strangest and most fascinating entities of the cosmos, simultaneously a mathematical construct, and also that the universe produces! The book is also a reflection on what it means to do science and our role as human beings in the scientific building.

The standard astrophysical description of collapsing objects tells us that massive, dark and compact objects are black holes. Any observation suggesting otherwise is an indication of beyond-the-standard-model physics. The advent of gravitational-wave astronomy and very long baseline interferometry allow one to finally probe into such foundational issues. We overview the physics of exotic dark compact objects and their observational status, including the observational evidence for black holes.