English

Can a nonextremal black hole be a particle accelerator?

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2020-11-11 v3 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We consider particle collisions in the background of a nonextremal black hole. Two particles fall from infinity, particle 1 is fine-tuned (critical), collision occurs in its turning point. The first example is the Reissner-Nordstr\"{o}m (RN) one. If the energy at infinity E1E_{1} is big enough, the turning point is close to the horizon. Then, we derive a simple formula according to which Ec.m.E1κ1/2E_{c.m.}\sim E_{1}\kappa ^{-1/2}, where κ\kappa is a surface gravity. Thus significant growth of Ec.m.E_{c.m.} is possible if (i) particle 1 is ultrarelativistic (if both particles are ultrarelativistic, this gives no gain as compared to collisions in flat space-time), (ii) a black hole is near-extremal (small κ\kappa ). In the scenario of multiple collisions the energy Ec.m.E_{c.m.} is finite in each individual collision. However, it can grow in subsequent collisions, provided new near-critical particles are heavy enough. For neutral rotating black holes, in case (i) a turning point remains far from the horizon but large Ec.m.E_{c.m.} is still possible. Case (ii) is similar to that for collisions in the RN metric. We develop a general theoretical scheme, direct astrophysical applications can be a next step to be studied.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.09413,
  title  = {Can a nonextremal black hole be a particle accelerator?},
  author = {O. B. Zaslavskii},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.09413},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

19 pages. Typose corrected. Matches published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:12:57.503Z