Can black hole superradiance be induced by galactic plasmas?
Abstract
Highly spinning Kerr black holes with masses are subject to an efficient superradiant instability in the presence of bosons with masses . We observe that this matches the effective plasma-induced photon mass in diffuse galactic or intracluster environments (). 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 . 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