Light rings and shadows of static black holes in effective quantum gravity II: A new solution without Cauchy horizons

Abstract: Among the three known types of static solutions proposed within the Hamiltonian constraint approach to effective quantum gravity (EQG), the first two have been extensively investigated, whereas the third type-which preserves general covariance, is free of Cauchy horizons, and was only recently obtained-remains relatively unexplored. This solution can describe a black hole with an event horizon for certain parameter ranges, or a horizonless compact object beyond those ranges. In this paper, we focus on the third type and show that its light rings feature both stable and unstable branches, and that the black hole shadow size grows with the quantum parameter-unlike in the first two types. However, when we account for both the shadow and the lensing ring, the overall behavior closely resembles that of the second type, in which an increasing quantum parameter leads to a larger portion of the lensing ring being occupied by the shadow. This feature can serve as a hallmark of black holes in EQG, offering a potential way to distinguish them from their GR counterparts. Remarkably, the parameter ranges under which the solution remains a black hole are highly consistent with the current observational constraints on black hole shadows, lending strong support to the classification of the third type of compact object in EQG as a black hole endowed with an event horizon.