Shadows and photon rings of a quantum black hole

Recently, a black hole model in loop quantum gravity has been proposed by Lewandowski, Ma, Yang and Zhang (Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{130}, 101501 (2023)). The metric tensor of the quantum black hole (QBH) is a suitably modified Schwarzschild one. In this paper, we calculate the radius of light ring and obtain the linear approximation of it with respect to the quantum correction parameter $\alpha$: $r_{l} \simeq 3 M - \frac{\alpha}{9 M}$. We then assume the QBH is backlit by a large, distant plane of uniform, isotropic emission and calculate the radius of the black hole shadow and its linear approximation: $r_{s} = 3 \sqrt{3} M - \frac{\alpha}{6 \left(\sqrt{3} M\right)}$. We also consider the photon ring structures in the shadow when the impact parameter $b$ of the photon approaches to a critical impact parameter $b_{\textrm{c}}$, and obtain a formula for estimating the deflection angle, which is $\varphi_{\textrm{def}} = - \frac{\sqrt{2}}{\omega r_{l}^2}\log{\left(b - b_c\right) + \widetilde{C}(b)}$. We also numerically plot the images of shadows and photon rings of the QBH in three different illumination models and compare them with that of a Schwarzschild in each model. It is found that we could distinguish the quantum black hole with a Schwarzschild black hole by the shadow images in certain specific illumination model.