Rotating black holes in Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity with finite coupling

Abstract

Among various strong-curvature extensions of general relativity, Einstein-dilaton-Gauss-Bonnet gravity stands out as the only nontrivial theory containing quadratic curvature corrections while being free from the Ostrogradsky instability to any order in the coupling parameter. We derive an approximate stationary and axisymmetric black hole solution of this gravitational theory in closed form, which is of fifth order in the black hole spin and of seventh order in the coupling parameter of the theory. This extends previous work that obtained the corrections to the metric only to second order in the spin and at the leading order in the coupling parameter, and allows us to consider values of the coupling parameter close to the maximum permitted by theoretical constraints. We compute some quantities which characterize this solution, such as the dilaton charge, the moment of inertia, and the quadrupole moment, and its geodesic structure, including the innermost stable circular orbit and the epicyclic frequencies for massive particles. The latter provides a valuable tool to test general relativity against strong-curvature corrections through observations of the electromagnetic spectrum of accreting black holes.