Rotational superradiance affects the dynamics of many rotating systems in nature, through either stimulated or spontaneous extraction of energy and angular momentum. By now, this process is well-studied in the relativistic setting, where systems are intrinsically dispersion-free. In many condensed matter systems, however, dispersion is an unavoidable aspect of the description for the short wavelength modes. For these systems, how might one expect superradiance to be modified? In this work, an answer to this question is provided using an illustrative example. The scattering of linear excitations of a Bose-Einstein condensate are studied in the presence of a rotating, draining vortex flow using the full Bogoliubov dispersion relation. It is shown that dispersion suppresses the extraction of energy and angular momentum, firstly, by decreasing the superradiant bandwidth, and secondly, by preventing high-angular momentum modes from superradiating.
Rotational superradiance was predicted theoretically decades ago, and is chiefly responsible for a number of important effects and phenomenology in black-hole physics. However, rotational superradiance has never been observed experimentally. Here, with the aim of probing superradiance in the lab, we investigate the behavior of sound and surface waves in fluids resting in a circular basin at the center of which a rotating cylinder is placed. We show that with a suitable choice for the material of the cylinder, surface and sound waves are amplified. Two types of instabilities are studied: one se…
Inertial motion superradiance, the emission of radiation by an initially unexcited system moving inertially but superluminally through a medium, has long been known. Rotational superradiance, the amplification of radiation by a rotating rigid object, was recognized much later, principally in connection with black hole radiances. Here we review the principles of inertial motion superradiance and prove thermodynamically that the Ginzburg--Frank condition for superradiance coincides with the condition for superradiant amplification of already existing radiation. Examples we cite include a new typ…
In 2016, the Nottingham group detected the rotational superradiance effect. While this experiment demonstrated the robustness of the superradiance process, it still lacks a complete theoretical description due to the many effects at stage in the experiment. In this paper, we shine new light on this experiment by deriving an estimate of the reflection coefficient in the dispersive regime by means of a WKB analysis. This estimate is used to evaluate the reflection coefficient spectrum of counter rotating modes in the Nottingham experiment. Our finding suggests that the vortex flow in the superra…
It is shown that the superradiance modes always exist in the radiation by the $(4+n)$-dimensional rotating black holes. Using a Bekenstein argument the condition for the superradiance modes is shown to be $0 < ω< m Ω$ for the scalar, electromagnetic and gravitational waves when the spacetime background has a single angular momentum parameter about an axis on the brane, where $Ω$ is a rotational frequency of the black hole and $m$ is an azimuthal quantum number of the radiated wave.
We consider scalar field perturbations of the asymptotically Gödel 5-dimensional charged rotating black holes with two equal angular momenta. It is shown that the spectrum of proper oscillations of the perturbation includes superradiant unstable modes. The reason for the instability is the confining Dirichlet boundary condition at the asymptotically far region of the Gödel Universe. The confining box makes superradiant modes extract rotational energy from the black hole and, after repeated reflections from the black hole, grow unboundedly. A similar instability takes place for rotating black h…
Light axions ($m_a \lesssim 10^{-10}$ eV) can form dense clouds around rapidly rotating astrophysical black holes via a mechanism known as rotational superradiance. The coupling between axions and photons induces a parametric resonance, arising from the stimulated decay of the axion cloud, which can rapidly convert regions of large axion number densities into an enormous flux of low-energy photons. In this work we consider the phenomenological implications of a superradiant axion cloud undergoing resonant decay. We show that the low energy photons produced from such events will be absorbed ove…
Wave scattering phenomena are ubiquitous to almost all Sciences, from Biology to Physics. When an incident wave scatters off of an obstacle, it is partially reflected and partially transmitted. Since the scatterer absorbs part of the incident energy, the reflected wave carries less energy than the incident one. However, if the obstacle is rotating, this process can be reversed and waves can be amplified, extracting energy from the scatterer. Even though this phenomenon, known as superradiance, has been thoroughly analysed in several theoretical scenarios (from eletromagnetic radiation scatteri…
In this thesis we study the phenomenon of superradiance and its implications to the stability of black-holes (BH) and perfect-fluid stars. Superradiance is a radiation enhancement process that involves rotating dissipative systems. In BH spacetimes, superradiance is due to dissipation at the event horizon, with interesting associated phenomena, namely floating orbits and BH-bombs. BH superradiance is a very interdisciplinary topic, and its study allows us to obtain important results in the area of particle physics. The scattering of a scalar field by a rotating BH leads to the formation of qua…
It is a well-known fact that compact gravitating objects admit bound state configurations for massive bosonic fields. In this work we describe a new class of superradiant instabilities of axion bound states in neutron star magnetospheres. The instability arises from the mixing of axion and photon modes in the magnetic field of the neutron star which extract energy from the rotating magnetosphere. Unlike for black holes, where the dissipation required for superradiance is provided by an absorbative horizon, the non-hermitian dynamics in this paper come from the resistivity in the stellar magnet…
This paper presents a numerical study of the acoustic superradiance from the single vortex state of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The draining bathtub model of an incompressible barotropic fluid is adopted to describe the vortex. The propagation of the velocity potential fluctuations are governed by the massless scalar Klein-Gordon wave equation, which establishes the rotating black-hole analogy. Hence, the amplified scattering of these fluctuations from the vortex comprise the superradiance effect. Particular to this study, a coordinate transformation is applied which enables the identifi…
The possibility of mining the rotational energy from black holes has far--reaching implications. Such energy extraction could occur even for isolated black holes, if hypothetical ultralight bosonic particles exist in Nature, leading to a new equilibrium state $-$ a black hole with synchronised bosonic hair $-$ whose lifetime could exceed the age of the Universe. A natural question is then: for an isolated black hole and at maximal efficiency, how large is the energy fraction $ε$ that can be extracted from a Kerr black hole by the superradiant growth of the dominant mode? In other words, how ha…
In the presence of massive bosonic degrees of freedom, rotational superradiance can trigger an instability that spins down black holes. This leads to peculiar gravitational-wave signatures and distribution in the spin-mass plane, which in turn can impose stringent constraints on ultralight fields. Here, we demonstrate that there is an analogous spindown effect for conducting stars. We show that rotating stars amplify low frequency electromagnetic waves, and that this effect is largest when the time scale for conduction within the star is of the order of a light crossing time. This has interest…
Recent general relativistic MHD simulations have suggested that relativistic jets from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) have been powered by rotational energy of central black holes. Some mechanisms of extraction of black hole rotational energy have been proposed, like the Penrose process, Blandford-Znajek mechanism, MHD Penrose process, and superradiance. The Blandford-Znajek mechanism is the most promising mechanism for the engines of the relativistic jets from AGNs. However, an intuitive interpretation of this mechanism with causality is not clarified yet, while the Penrose process has a clear…
Stellar Superradiance and Low-Energy Absorption in Dense Nuclear Media
Weizmann Institute of Science（魏茨曼科学研究所）；Niels Bohr Institute（尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）；CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa (UL)（里斯本大学高级技术学院物理系中心引力研究中心）；Tsung-Dao Lee Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学李政道研究所）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学）；The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY（德国电子同步加速器）
We discuss the friction experienced by the body rotating in superfluid liquid at T=0. The effect is analogous to the amplification of electromagnetic radiation and spontaneous emission by the body or black hole rotating in quantum vacuum, first discussed by Zel'dovich and Starobinsky. The friction is caused by the interaction of the part of the liquid, which is rigidly connected with the rotating body and thus represents the comoving detector, with the "Minkowski" vacuum outside the body. The emission process is the quantum tunneling of quasiparticles from the detector to the ergoregion, where…
Analogical thinking is a valuable tool in theoretical physics, since it allows us to take the understanding we have developed in one system and apply it to another. In this thesis, we study the analogy between two seemingly unlikely systems: rotating black holes, elusive cosmic entities that push our theoretical understanding of modern physics to its limits, and bathtub vortices, an occurrence so common that they can be observed on a day-to-day basis in almost any household. Despite the clear difference between these two systems, we argue that lessons from each can be used to learn something a…
We study the coupling of massive scalar fields to matter in orbit around rotating black holes. It is generally expected that orbiting bodies will lose energy in gravitational waves, slowly inspiralling into the black hole. Instead, we show that the coupling of the field to matter leads to a surprising effect: because of superradiance, matter can hover into "floating orbits" for which the net gravitational energy loss at infinity is entirely provided by the black hole's rotational energy. Orbiting bodies remain floating until they extract sufficient angular momentum from the black hole, or unti…
