We consider a process where two identical massive particles fall inwards, starting from rest at infinity towards the extremal Kerr black hole, collide outside the event horizon in its vicinity and produce two massless particles. The center of mass energy of collision between the two particles diverges if one of the particle admits a specific critical value of the angular momentum and if the collision takes place at a location arbitrarily close to the event horizon. Assuming the isotropic emission of particles in the center of mass frame we show that one of the massless particles produced has divergent conserved energy comparable to the center of mass energy with probability slightly less than half. This particle enters the black hole event horizon which coincides with the Cauchy horizon, turns back, and emerges through the white hole event horizon into another asymptotic region in the maximal extension of Kerr spacetime. Since conserved energy is preserved in this process, it is perceived as a particle with divergent energy by the observer when it reaches infinity. Thus the extremal white hole appears to be a source of ultra high energy particles. Similar processes wherein collision takes place slightly inside the black hole event horizon or just outside or inside of white hole event horizon also produce high energy particles.
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.
We prove that the only four dimensional, stationary, rotating, asymptotically flat (analytic) vacuum black hole with a single degenerate horizon is given by the extremal Kerr solution. We also prove a similar uniqueness theorem for the extremal Kerr-Newman solution. This closes a longstanding gap in the black hole uniqueness theorems.
The fundamental resonances of near-extremal Kerr black holes due to massive scalar perturbations are derived {\it analytically}. We show that there exists a critical mass parameter, $μ_c$, below which increasing the mass $μ$ of the field increases the oscillation frequency $\Re(ω)$ of the resonance. On the other hand, above the critical field mass increasing the mass $μ$ increases the damping rate $\Im(ω)$ of the mode. We confirm our analytical results by numerical computations.
In a recent paper (arXiv:1410.0694) Zilhão, Cardoso, Herdeiro, Lehner, and Sperhake have studied the nonlinear stability of Kerr-Newman black holes. We show that their numerical results for the time evolutions of the spacetime deformations of near-extremal Kerr-Newman black holes are described extremely well by a {\it universal} formula for the quasinormal resonances of the black holes. This formula is expressed in terms of the black-hole physical parameters: the horizon angular velocity $Ω_{\text{H}}$ and the Bekenstein-Hawking temperature $T_{\text{BH}}$.
The coupled gravitational-electromagnetic quasinormal resonances of charged rotating Kerr-Newman black holes are explored. In particular, using the recently published numerical data of Dias, Godazgar, and Santos [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 151101 (2015)], we show that the characteristic relaxation times $τ\equiv 1/\Imω_0$ of near-extremal Kerr-Newman black holes in the regime $Q/r_+\leq 0.9$ are described, to a very good degree of accuracy, by the simple universal relation $τ\times T_{\text{BH}}=π^{-1}$ (here $Q, r_+$, and $T_{\text{BH}}$ are respectively the electric charge, horizon radius, and te…
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 linear, spin-field perturbations of Kerr black holes in the extremal limit throughout the complex-frequency domain. We calculate quasi-normal modes of extremal Kerr, as well as of near-extremal Kerr, via a novel approach: using the method of Mano, Suzuki and Takasugi (MST). We also show how, in the extremal limit, a branch cut is formed at the superradiant-bound frequency, $ω_{SR}$, via a simultaneous accumulation of quasi-normal modes and totally-reflected modes. For real frequencies, we calculate the superradiant amplification factor, which yields the amount of rotational ener…
Although the circular photon orbit and ISCO for the Kerr black hole remain distinct from each other and from the horizon in the extremal spin limit on a constant Boyer-Lindquist time slice, on a horizon-crossing slice they both coincide with the null generators of the horizon.
It is believed that extremal black holes do not emit Hawking radiation as understood by taking extremal limits of non-extremal black holes. However, it is debated whether one can make such conclusion reliably starting from an extremal black hole, as the associated Bogoliubov coefficients which relate ingoing and outgoing field modes do not satisfy the required consistency condition. We address this issue in a canonical approach firstly by presenting an exact canonical derivation of the Hawking effect for non-extremal Kerr black holes. Subsequently, for extremal Kerr black holes we show that th…
We compute the second Seely-DeWitt coefficient of the kinetic operator of the metric and gauge fields in Einstein-Maxwell theory in an arbitrary background field configuration. We then use this result to compute the logarithmic correction to the entropy of an extremal Kerr-Newmann black hole.
We study the shadows cast by near-extremal Kerr-MOG black holes for different values of the parameter in modified gravity (MOG). In particular, we consider an isotropic emitter orbiting near such black holes and analytically compute the positions, fluxes and redshift factors of their images. The size of the shadow decreases when the modified parameter is increased. For each shadow, the images of the emitter appear on a special part of the shadow which has a rich structure. The primary image and secondary images are similar to those produced for the near-extremal (high spin) Kerr black hole, bu…
It has been shown that extremal Kerr black holes can be used as particle accelerators and arbitrarily high energy may be obtained near the event horizon. We study particle collisions near the event horizon (outer horizon) and Cauchy horizon (inner horizon) of a non-extremal Kerr black hole. Firstly, we provide a general proof showing that particles cannot collide with arbitrarily high energies at the outter horizon. Secondly, we show that ultraenergetic collisions can occur near the inner horizon of a Kerr black hole with any spin parameter $a$.
The recently proved `no short hair' theorem asserts that, if a spherically-symmetric static black hole has hair, then this hair (the external fields) must extend beyond the null circular geodesic (the "photonsphere") of the corresponding black-hole spacetime: $r_{\text{field}}>r_{\text{null}}$. In this paper we provide compelling evidence that the bound can be {\it violated} by {\it non}-spherically symmetric hairy black-hole configurations. To that end, we analytically explore the physical properties of cloudy Kerr-Newman black-hole spacetimes -- charged rotating black holes which support lin…
The quasinormal resonant modes of massless neutral fields in near-extremal Kerr-Newman-de Sitter black-hole spacetimes are calculated in the eikonal regime. It is explicitly proved that, in the angular momentum regime ${\bar a}> \sqrt{{1-2{\barΛ}\over{4+{\barΛ}/3}}}$, the black-hole spacetimes are characterized by slowly decaying resonant modes which are described by the compact formula $\Imω(n)=κ_+\cdot(n+{1\over2})$ [here the physical parameters $\{{\bar a},κ_+,{\barΛ},n\}$ are respectively the dimensionless angular momentum of the black hole, its characteristic surface gravity, the dimensio…
Linear perturbation theory is a powerful toolkit for studying black hole spacetimes. However, the perturbation equations are hard to solve unless we can use separation of variables. In the Kerr spacetime, metric perturbations do not separate, but curvature perturbations do. The cost of curvature perturbations is a very complicated metric-reconstruction procedure. This procedure can be avoided using a symmetry-adapted choice of basis functions in highly symmetric spacetimes, such as near-horizon extremal Kerr. In this paper, we focus on this spacetime, and (i) construct the symmetry-adapted bas…
We show that the horizon instability of the extremal Kerr black hole is associated with a singular branch point in the Green function at the superradiant bound frequency. We study generic initial data supported away from the horizon and find an enhanced growth rate due to nonaxisymmetric modes. The growth is controlled by the conformal weight of each mode. We speculate on connections to near-extremal black holes and holographic duality.
We analyze the near horizon symmetry of the extremal Kerr black hole within the framework of Poincaré gauge theory (PG) for two important limiting cases: Riemannian and teleparallel solution. We show that the algebra of canonical generators is realized by Virasoro algebra, with central charge which depends on the black hole horizon radius . The conformal entropy of the black hole is obtained via Cardy formula.
We first calculate equations of motion for particles in the Kerr-Sen-de Sitter black hole spacetime. Then in the eikonal regime, we analytically obtain the quasi-normal resonant modes of massless neutral scalar field perturbation and find its imaginary part to be characterized by the surface gravity of the near-extremal Kerr-Sen-de Sitter black hole with Cauchy horizon approaching the event horizon. We further show that the Penrose strong cosmic censorship conjecture is thus respected in this spacetime with dilaton scalar field and axion pseudoscalar field.
We study hidden symmetries, the symmetries associated with the Killing tensors, of the near horizon geometry of odd-dimensional Kerr-AdS-NUT black hole in two limits: generic extremal and extremal vanishing horizon (EVH) limits. Starting from Kerr-AdS-NUT black hole in ellipsoidal coordinates which admits integrable geodesic equations, we obtain the near horizon extremal/EVH geometries and their principal and Killing tensors by taking the near horizon limit. We explicitly demonstrate that geodesic equations are separable and integrable on theses near horizon geometries. We also compute the con…
Realistic accretion disk models require a number of ingredients, including viscous fluids, electromagnetic fields and general relativistic corrections. Close to the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) the latter can be appreciable and (quasi-)Newtonian approximations become unreliable. This is particularly true for nearly extremal black holes like GRS 1915+105, where the ISCO almost coincides with the black hole horizon. To describe the physics close to the ISCO adequately in a simplified model we approximate the nearly extremal Kerr geometry by the near-horizon extremal Kerr geometry and c…
In this paper, we deal with the null geodesics extending from the near-horizon region out to a distant observatory in an extremal Kerr-Newman black hole background. In particular, using the matched asymptotic expansion method, we analytically solve the null geodesics near the superradiant bound in the form of algebraic equations. For the case that the photon trajectories are limited in the equatorial plane, the shifts in the azimuthal angle and time are obtained.
We show that scalar, electromagnetic, and gravitational perturbations of extremal Kerr black holes are asymptotically self-similar under the near-horizon, late-time scaling symmetry of the background metric. This accounts for the Aretakis instability (growth of transverse derivatives) as a critical phenomenon associated with the emergent symmetry. We compute the critical exponent of each mode, which is equivalent to its decay rate. It follows from symmetry arguments that, despite the growth of transverse derivatives, all generally covariant scalar quantities decay to zero.
It is well known that the Kerr-NUT-AdS-dS black hole admits two linearly independent Killing vectors and possesses a hidden symmetry generated by a rank-2 Killing tensor. The near-horizon geometry of an extremal Kerr-NUT-AdS-dS black hole admits four linearly independent Killing vectors, and we show how the hidden symmetry of the black hole itself is carried over by means of a modified Killing-Yano potential which is given explicitly. We demonstrate that the corresponding Killing tensor of the near-horizon geometry is reducible as it can be expressed in terms of the Casimir operators formed by…
The fundamental resonances of rapidly rotating Kerr black holes in the eikonal limit are derived analytically. We show that there exists a critical value, $μ_c=\sqrt{{15-\sqrt{193}\over{2}}}$, for the dimensionless ratio $μ\equiv m/l$ between the azimuthal harmonic index $m$ and the spheroidal harmonic index $l$ of the perturbation mode, above which the perturbations become long lived. In particular, it is proved that above $μ_c$ the imaginary parts of the quasinormal frequencies scale like the black-hole temperature: $ω_I(n;μ>μ_c)=2πT_{BH}(n+{1\over 2})$. This implies that for perturbations m…
We construct asymptotically Kaluza-Klein solutions in five-dimensional Einstein-Maxwell theory which represent a pair of extremal, charged, static black holes on Kerr-Taub-bolt space. Regularity conditions require that the topology of spatial infinity and that of each black hole are not S$^3$, but different lens spaces. We show that for a given topology at spatial infinity, there are an infinite number of different horizon topologies for the black hole pair. We briefly discuss a generalization to the case with a positive cosmological constant.
I rederive the Kerr/CFT correspondence without first taking the near-horizon extremal Kerr limit. This method extends easily to nonextremal black holes, for which the temperature and central charge behave poorly at the horizon but the entropy remains finite. A computation yields one-half of the standard Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, with hints that the other half may be related to a conformal field theory at the inner horizon. I then present an alternative approach, based on a stretched Killing horizon, in which the full entropy is obtained and the temperature and central charge remain well-beha…
The fact that one must evaluate the near-extremal and near-horizon limits of Kerr space-time in a specific order, is shown to a lead to discontinuity in the extremal limit, such that this limiting space-time differs nontrivially from the precisely extremal space-time. This is established by first showing a discontinuity in the extremal limit of the maximal analytic extension of the Kerr geometry, given by Carter. Next, we examine the ISCO of the exactly extremal Kerr geometry and show that on the event horizon of the extremal Kerr black hole, it coincides with the principal null geodesic gener…
Motivated by the Kerr/CFT conjecture, we explore solutions of vacuum general relativity whose asymptotic behavior agrees with that of the extremal Kerr throat, sometimes called the Near-Horizon Extreme Kerr (NHEK) geometry. We argue that all such solutions are diffeomorphic to the NHEK geometry itself. The logic proceeds in two steps. We first argue that certain charges must vanish at all times for any solution with NHEK asymptotics. We then analyze these charges in detail for linearized solutions. Though one can choose the relevant charges to vanish at any initial time, these charges are not …
The spontaneous pair production of charged scalars in a near extremal Kerr-Newman (KN) black hole is analytically studied. It is shown that the existence condition for the pair production is equivalent to the violation of the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound in an AdS$_2$ space. The mean number of produced pairs in the extremal black hole has a thermal interpretation, in which the effective temperature for the Schwinger effect in the AdS$_2$ space persistently holds, while the mean number in the near extremal black hole has an additional factor of the Schwinger effect in the Rindler space. In addi…
It has recently been shown by Yang. et. al. [Phys. Rev. D {\bf 87}, 041502(R) (2013)] that rotating Kerr black holes are characterized by two distinct sets of quasinormal resonances. These two families of quasinormal resonances display qualitatively different asymptotic behaviors in the extremal ($a/M\to 1$) black-hole limit: The zero-damping modes (ZDMs) are characterized by relaxation times which tend to infinity in the extremal black-hole limit ($\Imω\to 0$ as $a/M\to 1$), whereas the damped modes (DMs) are characterized by non-zero damping rates ($\Imω\to$ finite-values as $a/M\to 1$). In …
We study here the quasi-normal mode stability of a near-extremal Kerr superspinar, an exotic spinning compact object that exceeds the Kerr bound, under gravitational perturbations. Despite previous beliefs that these objects would be mode unstable, we show by analytically treating the Teukolsky equations that these objects are in fact mode stable under almost all (barring a zero-measure set) boundary conditions.
We study causal geodesics in the equatorial plane of the extremal Kerr-Taub-NUT spacetime, focusing on the Innermost Stable Circular Orbit (ISCO),and compare its behaviour with extant results for the ISCO in the extremal Kerr spacetime. Calculation of the radii of the direct ISCO, its Kepler frequency, and rotational velocity show that the ISCO coincides with the horizon in the exactly extremal situation. We also study geodesics in the strong {\it non}-extremal limit, i.e., in the limit of vanishing Kerr parameter (i.e., for Taub-NUT and massless Taub-NUT spacetimes as special cases of this sp…
Motivated by the recent interest in quantization of black hole area spectrum, we consider the area spectrum of Kerr and extremal Kerr black holes. Based on the proposal by Bekenstein and others that the black hole area spectrum is discrete and equally spaced, we implement Kunstatter's method to derive the area spectrum for the Kerr and extremal Kerr black holes. The real part of the quasinormal frequencies of Kerr black hole used for this computation is of the form $mΩ$ where $Ω$ is the angular velocity of the black hole horizon. The resulting spectrum is discrete but not as expected uniformly…
We investigate the charged scalar pair production near the horizon of a near-extremal Kerr-Sen black holes. The condition for pair production to occur has relation to the violation of Breitenlohner-Freedman bound in an AdS$_2$ space. The method employed in this work has been used to show the pair production in the near-horizon of a near-extremal Kerr-Newman black hole and its non-rotating case as well. We also discuss the static limit of our result.
The characteristic damping times of the natural oscillations of a Kerr black hole become arbitrarily large as the extremal limit is approached. This behavior is associated with the so-called zero damped modes (ZDMs), and suggests that extremal black holes are characterized by quasinormal modes whose frequencies are purely real. Since these frequencies correspond to oscillations whose angular phase velocity matches the horizon angular velocity of the black hole, they are sometimes called "synchronous frequencies". Several authors have studied the ZDMs for near-extremal black holes. Recently, th…
We provide an in-depth investigation of quasinormal-mode oscillations of Kerr black holes with nearly extremal angular momenta. We first discuss in greater detail the two distinct types of quasinormal mode frequencies presented in a recent paper (arXiv:1212.3271). One set of modes, that we call "zero-damping modes", has vanishing imaginary part in the extremal limit, and exists for all corotating perturbations (i.e., modes with azimuthal index m being nonnegative). The other set (the "damped modes") retains a finite decay rate even for extremal Kerr black holes, and exists only for a subset of…
Liberati, Rothman and Sonego have recently showed that objects collapsing into extremal Reissner-Nordstrom black holes do not behave as thermal objects at any time in their history. In particular, a temperature, and hence thermodynamic entropy, are undefined for them. I demonstrate that the analysis goes through essentially unchanged for Kerr black holes.
We consider the escape probability of a photon emitted from the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) of a rapidly rotating black hole. As an isotropically emitting light source on a circular orbit reduces its orbital radius, the escape probability of a photon emitted from it decreases monotonically. The escape probability evaluated at the ISCO also decreases monotonically as the black hole spin increases. When the dimensionless Kerr parameter $a$ is at the Thorne limit $a=0.998$, the escape probability from the ISCO is $58.8\%$. In the extremal case $a=1$, even if the orbital radius of the l…
We show that nearly extremal Kerr black holes have two distinct sets of quasinormal modes, which we call zero-damping modes (ZDMs) and damped modes (DMs). The ZDMs exist for all harmonic indices $l$ and $m \ge 0$, and their frequencies cluster onto the real axis in the extremal limit. The DMs have nonzero damping for all black hole spins; they exist for all counterrotating modes ($m<0$) and for corotating modes with $0\leq μ\lesssim μ_c=0.74$ (in the eikonal limit), where $μ\equiv m/(l+1/2)$. When the two families coexist, ZDMs and DMs merge to form a single set of quasinormal modes as the bla…
A fascinating property of extremal Kerr black hole (BH) is that it could be act as a particle accelerator with infinite high center-of-mass (CM) energy \cite{bsw}. In this note, we would like to discuss about such fascinating result and to point out that this infinite energy at the event horizon comes solely due \emph{to the singular nature of the extremal limit}. We also show that a non-extremal Kerr BH can \emph{not} transform into extremal Kerr BH by the Bañados-Silk-West mechanism. Moreover, we discuss about three possible geometries (near extremal, purely extremal and near horizon of extr…
Motivated by the recent researches of black holes with NUT charge, we investigate the validity of the weak cosmic censorship conjecture for Kerr-Taub-NUT black hole with a test massive scalar field and a test particle, respectively. For the scalar field scattering gedanken experiment, we consider an infinitesimal time interval process. The result shows that both extremal and near-extremal Kerr-Taub-NUT black holes cannot be over-spun. For the test particle thought experiment, the study suggests that extremal Kerr-Taub-NUT black hole cannot be over-spun; while near-extremal Kerr-Taub-NUT black …
Extreme Black holes are an important theoretical laboratory for exploring the nature of entropy. We suggest that this unusual nature of the extremal limit could explain the entropy of extremal Kerr black holes. The time-independence of the extremal black hole, the zero surface gravity, the zero entropy and the absence of a bifurcate Killing horizon are all related properties that define and reduce to one single unique feature of the extremal Kerr spacetime. We suggest the presence of a true geometric discontinuity as the underlying cause of a vanishing entropy.
Quantum-Corrected Hawking Radiation from Near-Extremal Kerr-Newman Black Holes
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur（坎普尔印度理工学院）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；University of Michigan（密歇根大学）；The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics（阿卜杜斯·萨拉姆理论物理国际中心）
We study analytically the fundamental resonances of near-extremal, slowly rotating Kerr-Newman black holes. We find a simple analytic expression for these black-hole quasinormal frequencies in terms of the black-hole physical parameters: omega=m Omega-2i pi T(l+1+n), where T and Omega are the temperature and angular velocity of the black hole. The mode parameters l and m are the spheroidal harmonic index and the azimuthal harmonic index of a co-rotating mode, respectively. This analytical formula is valid in the regime Im omega << Re omega <<1/M, where M is the black-hole mass.
In the extremal Kerr spacetime the horizon Killing vector field is null on a timelike hypersurface crossing the horizon at a fixed latitude, and spacelike on both sides of the horizon in the equatorial plane. We explain in some detail how this behaviour is consistent with the existence of timelike Killing vectors everywhere off the horizon, and how it arises in a limit from the Kerr spacetime where there is a similar hypersurface strictly outside the horizon.
By neglecting the self-force, self-energy, and radiative effects, it has been shown that an extremal or near-extremal Kerr-Newman black hole can turn into a naked singularity when it captures charged and spinning massive particles. A straightforward question then arises: do charged and rotating black holes in string theory possess the same property? In this paper we apply the Wald's gedanken experiment, in his study on the possibility of destroying extremal Kerr-Newman black holes, to the case of (near-)extremal Kerr-Sen black holes. We find that feeding a test particle into a (near-)extremal …
An exact expression of Lense-Thirring precession rate is derived for non-extremal and extremal Plebański-Demiański spacetimes. This formula is used to find the exact Lense-Thirring precession rate in various axisymmetric spacetimes, like: Kerr, Kerr-Newman, Kerr-de Sitter etc. We also show, if the Kerr parameter vanishes in Plebański-Demiański(PD) spacetime, the Lense-Thirring precession does not vanish due to the existence of NUT charge. To derive the LT precession rate in extremal Plebański-Demiański we first derive the general extremal condition for PD spacetimes. This general result could …
