Influence of Quintessential Matter on the Optical Properties of a Spherically Symmetric Black Hole

Abstract: We study analytically the influence of a quintessential matter on the shadow of a black hole. Since we consider as starting point Kiselev’s solution, this work is restricted to spherically symmetric and static situations where the shadow is circular. As particular examples we consider the Schwarzschild spacetime, Reissner-Nordstrom solution and, of course, the spherically symmetric black hole surrounded by quintessential matter. The perspectives of actually observing the influence of this kind of matter on the shadows of supermassive black holes are presented to find that very-long baseline interferometry (VLBI) in the near future may provide information about quintessence presence