English

Can black hole superradiance be induced by galactic plasmas?

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena 2018-03-20 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Highly spinning Kerr black holes with masses M=1100 MM = 1 - 100\ M_{\odot} are subject to an efficient superradiant instability in the presence of bosons with masses μ10101012 eV\mu \sim 10^{-10} - 10^{-12}\ {\rm eV}. We observe that this matches the effective plasma-induced photon mass in diffuse galactic or intracluster environments (ωpl10101012 eV\omega_{\rm pl} \sim 10^{-10} - 10^{-12}\ {\rm eV}). This suggests that bare Kerr black holes within galactic or intracluster environments, possibly even including the ones produced in recently observed gravitational wave events, are unstable to formation of a photon cloud that may contain a significant fraction of the mass of the original black hole. At maximal efficiency, the instability timescale for a massive vector is milliseconds, potentially leading to a transient rate of energy extraction from a black hole in principle as large as 1055 ergs1\sim 10^{55} \ {\rm erg \, s}^{-1}. We discuss possible astrophysical effects this could give rise to, including a speculative connection to Fast Radio Bursts.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.02034,
  title  = {Can black hole superradiance be induced by galactic plasmas?},
  author = {Joseph P. Conlon and Carlos A. R. Herdeiro},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.02034},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 pages; v2. accepted version