Generic extensions of the standard model predict the existence of ultralight bosonic degrees of freedom. Several ongoing experiments are aimed at detecting these particles or constraining their mass range. Here we show that massive vector fields around rotating black holes can give rise to a strong superradiant instability which extracts angular momentum from the hole. The observation of supermassive spinning black holes imposes limits on this mechanism. We show that current supermassive black hole spin estimates provide the tightest upper limits on the mass of the photon (mv<4x10^{-20} eV according to our most conservative estimate), and that spin measurements for the largest known supermassive black holes could further lower this bound to mv<10^{-22} eV. Our analysis relies on a novel framework to study perturbations of rotating Kerr black holes in the slow-rotation regime, that we developed up to second order in rotation, and that can be extended to other spacetime metrics and other theories.
A co-rotating bosonic field interacting with a spinning Kerr black hole can extract rotational energy and angular momentum from the hole. This intriguing phenomenon is known as superradiant scattering. As pointed out by Press and Teukolsky, the black-hole-field system can be made unstable (explosive) by placing a reflecting mirror around the black hole which prevents the extracted energy from escaping to infinity. This composed black-hole-mirror-field bomb has been studied extensively by many researchers. It is worth noting, however, that most former studies of the black-hole bomb phenomenon h…
Black holes are the elementary particles of gravity, the final state of sufficiently massive stars and of energetic collisions. With a forty-year long history, black hole physics is a fully-blossomed field which promises to embrace several branches of theoretical physics. Here I review the main developments in highly dynamical black holes with an emphasis on high energy black hole collisions and probes of particle physics via superradiance. This write-up, rather than being a collection of well known results, is intended to highlight open issues and the most intriguing results.
We consider the decay of a particle with some energy $E_{0}>0$ inside the ergosphere of a black hole. After the first decay one of particles with the energy $E_{1}<0$ falls towards a black hole while the second one with $% E_{2}>E_{0}\,\ $moves in the outward direction. It bounces back from a reflecting shell and, afterwards, the process repeats. For radial motion of charged particles in the Reissner-Nordstöm metric, the result depends strongly on a concrete scenario. In particular, an indefinitely large growth of energy inside a shell is possible that gives rise to a black-hole bomb. We also …
We study the formation of superradiant bound states for massive scalar fields in five-dimensional rotating black string geometries with a non-vanishing Kaluza-Klein momentum along the compact direction. Even though all Kaluza-Klein modes may form bound states in this geometry, in realistic extra-dimensional models and astrophysical black holes only the zero-mode is sufficiently light for superradiant instabilities to develop, provided the field has a small but non-vanishing mass, as for example for axion-like particles. We use analytical and numerical methods to show that, although the Kaluza-…
The superradiant instability of rotating black holes with negative cosmological constant is studied by numerically solving the full 3+1-dimensional Einstein equations. We find evidence for an epoch dominated by a solution with a single helical Killing vector and a multi-stage process with distinct superradiant instabilities.
A charged scalar field impinging upon a charged Reissner-Nordstrom black hole can be amplified as it scatters off the hole, a phenomenon known as superradiant scattering. This scattering process in the superradiant regime w<qQ/r_+ (here w, q, Q, and r_{+-} are the conserved frequency of the wave, the charge coupling constant of the field, the electric charge of the black hole, and the horizon radii of the black hole, respectively) results in the extraction of Coulomb energy and electric charge from the charged black hole. The black-hole-field system can be made unstable by placing a reflecting…
The intriguing superradiant amplification phenomenon allows an orbiting scalar field to extract rotational energy from a spinning Kerr black hole. Interestingly, the energy extraction rate can grow exponentially in time if the black-hole-field system is placed inside a reflecting mirror which prevents the field from radiating its energy to infinity. This composed Kerr-black-hole-scalar-field-mirror system, first designed by Press and Teukolsky, has attracted the attention of physicists over the last four decades. Previous numerical studies of this spinning {\it black-hole bomb} have revealed t…
The well-known superradiant amplification mechanism allows a charged scalar field of proper mass $μ$ and electric charge $q$ to extract the Coulomb energy of a charged Reissner-Nordström black hole. The rate of energy extraction can grow exponentially in time if the system is placed inside a reflecting cavity which prevents the charged scalar field from escaping to infinity. This composed black-hole-charged-scalar-field-mirror system is known as the {\it charged black-hole bomb}. Previous numerical studies of this composed physical system have shown that, in the linearized regime, the inequali…
We find the phase diagram of solutions of the charged black hole bomb system. In particular, we find the static hairy black holes of Einstein-Maxwell-Scalar theory confined in a Minkowski box. We impose boundary conditions such that the scalar field vanishes at and outside a cavity of constant radius. These hairy black holes are asymptotically flat with a scalar condensate floating above the horizon. We identify four critical scalar charges which mark significant changes in the qualitative features of the phase diagram. When they coexist, hairy black holes always have higher entropy than the R…
We examine the black hole bomb model which consists of a rotating black hole of five-dimenensional minimal ungauged supergravity and a reflecting mirror around it. For low-frequency scalar perturbations, we find solutions to the Klein-Gordon equation in the near-horizon and far regions of the black hole spacetime. To avoid solutions with logarithmic terms, we assume that the orbital quantum number $ l $ takes on nearly, but not exactly, integer values and perform the matching of these solutions in an intermediate region. This allows us to calculate analytically the frequency spectrum of quasin…
Recently, we have provided an analytical treatment of the phenomena known as the 'black-hole bomb' (arXiv:0910.0734). In particular, we have determined analytically the unstable growing resonances of a massive scalar field in the rotating Kerr black hole spacetime. It was later claimed by J. G. Rosa (arXiv:0912.1780) that the analytic procedure may fail for some values of the field's mass. This claim was based on the concern that some of the Gamma functions that are involved in the analysis may develop poles. In this comment we show by explicit calculations that the Gamma functions which are u…
The superradiant stability of higher dimensional non-extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black hole under charged massive scalar perturbation is analytically studied. We extend our previous studies of four- and five-dimensional non-extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black hole cases to six-dimensional case. By analyzing the derivative of the effective potential with an analytical method, we find that no potential well exists outside the outer horizon of the black hole for the superradiant scalar modes. This means that there is no black hole bomb for the system consisting of six-dimensional Reissner-Nordstrom…
Press and Teukolsky famously introduced the concept of a black hole bomb system: a scalar field scattering a Kerr black hole confined inside a mirror undergoes superradiant amplification that keeps repeating due to the reflecting boundary conditions at the mirror. A similar charged black hole bomb system exists if we have a charged scalar field propagating in a Reissner-Nordstrom black hole confined inside a box. We point out that scalar fields propagating in such a background are unstable not only to superradiance but also to a mechanism known as the near-horizon scalar condensation instabili…
Laboratoire de Mathématiques de Reims, FR CNRS 3399, UFR SEN（兰斯数学实验室）；Université de Brest（布雷斯特大学）；Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学卡文迪许实验室）
The superradiant stability of asymptotically flat D-dimensional extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black holes under charged massive scalar perturbation is analytically studied. Recently, an analytical method has been proposed by the author and used to prove that five and six-dimensional extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black holes are superradiantly stable under charged massive scalar perturbation. We apply this analytical method in the D-dimensional extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black hole cases and prove that the D-dimensional Reissner-Nordstrom black holes are all superradiantly stable under charged mas…
We consider the imprint of superradiant instabilities of nonevaporating primordial black holes (PBHs) on the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In the radiation dominated era, PBHs are surrounded by a roughly homogeneous cosmic plasma which endows photons with an effective mass through the plasma frequency. In this setting, spinning PBHs are unstable to a spontaneous spindown through the well-known "black-hole bomb" mechanism. At linear level, the photon density is trapped by the effective photon mass and grows exponentially in time due to superradiance. As the plasma density d…
The analogy between sound wave propagation and light waves led to the study of acoustic holes, the acoustic analogues of black holes. Many black hole features have their counterparts in acoustic holes. The Kerr metric, the rotating metric for black holes in general relativity, has as analogue the draining bathtub metric, a metric for a rotating acoustic hole. Here we report on the progress that has been made in the understanding of features, such as quasinormal modes and tails, superresonance, and instabilities when the hole is surrounded by a reflected mirror, in the draining bathtub metric. …
The fundamental role played by black holes in many areas of physics makes it highly important to explore the nature of their stability. The stability of charged Reissner-Nordström black holes to {\it neutral} (gravitational and electromagnetic) perturbations was established almost four decades ago. However, the stability of these charged black holes under {\it charged} perturbations has remained an open question due to the complexity introduced by the well-known phenomena of superradiant scattering: A charged scalar field impinging on a charged Reissner-Nordström black hole can be {\it amplifi…
It was first pointed out by Press and Teukolsky that a system composed of a spinning Kerr black hole surrounded by a reflecting mirror may develop instabilities. The physical mechanism responsible for the development of these exponentially growing instabilities is the superradiant amplification of bosonic fields confined between the black hole and the mirror. A remarkable feature of this composed black-hole-mirror-field system is the existence of a critical mirror radius, $r^{\text{stat}}_{\text{m}}$, which supports {\it stationary} (marginally-stable) field configurations. This critical (`sta…
University of Nottingham（诺丁汉大学）；Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, Institut Néel（格勒诺布尔阿尔卑斯大学，法国国家科学研究中心，格勒诺布尔理工学院，内耳研究所）；University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；King’s College London, University of London（伦敦国王学院，伦敦大学）；Centro de Matemática, Computação（数学与计算中心）
Massive bosonic fields in the background of a Kerr black hole can either trigger superradiant instabilities (black-hole bombs) or form equilibrium configurations corresponding to pure bound states, known as stationary scalar clouds. Here, similar phenomena are shown to emerge in the fluctuation dynamics of a rotating photon-fluid model. In the presence of suitable vortex flows, the density fluctuations are governed by the massive Klein-Gordon equation on a (2+1) curved spacetime, possessing an ergoregion and an event horizon. We report on superradiant instabilities originating from quasi-bound…
A bosonic field impinging on a rotating black hole can be amplified as it scatters off the hole, a phenomena known as superradiant scattering. If in addition the field has a non-zero rest mass then the mass term effectively works as a mirror, reflecting the scattered wave back towards the black hole. In this physical system, known as a black-hole bomb, the wave may bounce back and forth between the black hole and some turning point amplifying itself each time. Consequently, the massive field grows exponentially over time and is unstable. Former analytical estimations of the timescale associate…
Vortices and black holes set the scene for many interesting dynamical processes in physics. Here, we study the dynamical instability of quantised vortices and rotational superradiance around rotating black holes, illustrating in the process that the same physics is at play in these two seemingly disparate phenomena. We also compare the instability of the vortex to the black hole bomb instability, which occurs for massive scalar fields in the Kerr spacetime. Taking inspiration from the analogy between black hole bomb modes and the hydrogen spectrum, the vortex instability is compared with nucle…
We analyze the spectrum of massive scalar bound states in the background of extremal Kerr black holes, focusing on modes in the superradiant regime, which grow exponentially in time and quickly deplete the black hole's mass and spin. Previous analytical estimates for the growth rate of this instability were limited to the $μM\ll1$ and $μM\gg1$ regimes, where $μ$ and $M$ denote the scalar field and black hole masses, respectively. In this work, we discuss an analytical method to compute the superradiant spectrum for generic values of these parameters, namely in the phenomenologically interestin…
The superradiant scattering of massive scalar particles by a rotating mini black hole is investigated. Imposing the mirror boundary condition, the system becomes the so called black-hole bomb where the rotation energy of the black hole is transferred to the scattered particle exponentially with time. Bulk emissions as well as brane emissions are considered altogether. It is found that the largest effects are expected for the brane emission of lower angular modes with lighter mass and larger angular momentum of the black hole. Possibilities of the forming the black-hole bomb at the LHC are disc…
These notes were prepared for a lecture on black holes delivered at the DPG Physics School "General Relativity @ 99" (Physikzentrum Bad Honnef, Germany, September 2014). The common thread of the lecture is the relation between geodesic stability and black-hole perturbations in the geometric optics limit. Chapter 1 establishes notation and discusses a common misconception on Michell's "Newtonian black holes". Chapters 2 and 3 deal with particle dynamics and wave dynamics in black-hole spacetimes, respectively. All calculations should be simple enough that they can be done with pen and paper. Ch…
In this paper we consider the massive scalar perturbation on the top of a small spinning-like black hole in context of Einstein-bumblebee modified gravity in order to probe the role of spontaneous Lorentz symmetry breaking on the superradiance scattering and corresponding instability. We show that at the low-frequency limit of the scalar wave the superradiance scattering will be enhanced with the Lorentz-violating parameter $α<0$ and will be weakened with $α>0$. Moreover, by addressing the black hole bomb issue, we extract an improved bound in the instability regime indicating that $α<0$ incre…
We investigate the stability of $f(R)$-rotating (Kerr) black hole obtained from a limited form of $f(R)$ gravity. In order to avoid the difficulty of handling fourth order linearized equations, we transform this form of $f(R)$ gravity into the scalar-tensor theory by introducing two auxiliary scalars. In this case, the linearized curvature scalar equation leads to a massive scalaron equation. It turns out that the $f(R)$-rotating black hole is unstable because of the superradiant instability known as the black-hole bomb idea.
Similar to the superradiant effect in Reissner-Nordström black hole, a charged scalar field can be amplified when impinging on the charged black hole in string theory. According to the black-hole bomb mechanism,the mass term of the incident field can works as the reflecting mirror, which may trigger the instability of black hole. We study the possible instability triggered by superradiant effect and demonstrate that the charged black hole in string theory is stable against the massive charged scalar perturbation. The reason is that there is no trapping potential well in the black hole exterior…
Black holes in $f(R)$-gravity are known to be unstable, especially the rotating ones. In particular, an instability develops that looks like the classical black hole bomb mechanism: the linearized modified Einstein equations are characterized by an effective mass that acts like a massive scalar perturbation on the Kerr solution in General Relativity, which is known to yield instabilities. In this note, we consider a special class of $f(R)$ gravity that has the property of being scale-invariant. As a prototype, we consider the simplest case $f(R)=R^2$ and show that, in opposition to the general…
A scalar field gravitational analog of the Reissner-Nordstrom solution is investigated. The nonlinear Newtonian model has an upper-limit of charge for a central mass which agrees with the general relativistic condition required for the existence of the black hole horizon. The maximum limit for accumulation by bombardment of charged particles is found. The aim is to investigate the resulting physics after severing the effects of curvature from the effects of energy-mass equivalence.
A black hole image contains a bright ring of photons that have closely circled the black hole on their way from the source to the detector. Here, we study the photon ring of a rotating black hole which is pierced by a global hyper-light axion-type cosmic string. We show that the coupling $ϕF \tilde{F}$ between the axion $ϕ$ and the photon can give rise to a unique polarimetric structure of the photon ring. The structure emerges due to an Aharonov-Bohm type effect that leads to a change of the polarization directions of linear polarized photons when they circle the black hole. For several param…
The instability of rotating Kerr black holes due to massive scalar perturbations is investigated. It is well known that a bosonic field impinging on a Kerr black hole can be amplified as it scatters off the hole. This superradiant scattering occurs for frequencies in the range $ω<mΩ$, where $Ω$ is the angular frequency of the black hole and $m$ is the azimuthal harmonic index of the mode. If the incident field has a non-zero rest mass, $μ$, then the mass term effectively works as a mirror, reflecting the scattered wave back towards the black hole. The wave may bounce back and forth between the…
One of the most remarkable predictions of the general theory of relativity is the existence of black-hole "photonspheres", compact null hypersurfaces on which massless particles can orbit the central black hole. We prove that every spherically-symmetric asymptotically flat black-hole spacetime is characterized by a photonsphere whose radius is bounded from above by $r_γ \leq 3M$, where $M$ is the total ADM mass of the black-hole spacetime. It is shown that hairy black-hole configurations conform to this upper bound. In particular, the null circular geodesic of the (bald) Schwarzschild black-ho…
The existence of closed null circular geodesics around black holes is one of the most intriguing predictions of general relativity. It has recently been conjectured that the radii of black-hole photonspheres are bounded from below by the simple relation $r_{\text{ph}}\geq {3\over2}r_{\text{H}}$, where $r_{\text{H}}$ is the radius of the outer black-hole horizon. We here prove the validity of this conjecture for spherically symmetric hairy black-hole configurations whose radial pressure function $P\equiv |r^3p|$ decreases monotonically.
In this article, the behaviour of a charged and massive scalar field around a global monopole swallowed by a Reissner-Nordström-Anti-de Sitter (RN-AdS) black hole is investigated by considering the Klein-Gordon equation in this geometry. The superradiance phenomenon and instability behaviour of the black hole against charged scalar perturbations are studied for both an RN-AdS case and also for an RN black hole surrounded by a reflective mirror, i.e., the black hole bomb case. The effects of the monopole on these cases are discussed analytically and also with the help of several graphs in detai…
Black hole images present an annular region of enhanced brightness. In the absence of propagation effects, this "photon ring" has universal features that are completely governed by general relativity and independent of the details of the emission. Here, we show that the polarimetric image of a black hole also displays universal properties. In particular, the photon ring exhibits a self-similar pattern of polarization that encodes the black hole spin. We explore the corresponding universal polarimetric signatures of the photon ring on long interferometric baselines, and propose a method for mea…
We consider necessary and sufficient conditions for photons emitted from the vicinity of a Kerr black hole horizon to escape to infinity. The radial equation of motion determines necessary conditions for photons to reach infinity, and the polar angle equation of motion further restricts the allowed region of photon motion. Unlike emission from the equatorial plane, the latter restrictions are crucial for photon escape when the initial polar angle of the emission point is arbitrary. We provide a visualization tool to analyze these two conditions and demonstrate a procedure for revealing photon …
We consider necessary and sufficient conditions for photons emitted from an arbitrary spacetime position of the extremal Kerr black hole to escape to infinity. The radial equation of motion determines the necessary conditions for photons emitted from $r=r_*$ to escape to infinity, and the polar angle equation of motion further restricts the allowed region of photon motion. From these two conditions, we provide a method to visualize a two-dimensional photon impact parameter space that allows photons to escape to infinity, i.e., the escapable region. Finally, we completely identify the escapable…
We investigate the spherical photon orbits in near-extremal Kerr spacetimes. We show that the spherical photon orbits with impact parameters in a finite range converge on the event horizon. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the Weyl curvature near the horizon does not generate the shear of a congruence of such light rays. Because of this property, a series of images produced by the light orbiting around a near-extremal Kerr black hole several times can be observable.
The black hole superradiance phenomena state that when a scalar wave perturbation is properly scattering off a charged or rotating black hole, the energy of the reflected scalar wave may be amplified. If this amplification process can occur back and forth through certain confining mechanisms, it will lead to strong instability of the black hole, which is so-called "black hole bomb". In this paper, the superradiant stability is investigated for dyonic black holes in string theory. Although the electric charged black hole in string theory has been proved superrdiantly stable, it is found that th…
Dimming of Photon Ring due to Photon-Axion Conversion around Kerr Black Holes
Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Deemed to be University)（希夫纳达尔卓越机构（认可大学））；National Institute of Technology, Rourkela（鲁尔克拉国家理工学院）；Universität Hamburg（汉堡大学）
