English

Ergoregion instability of ultra-compact astrophysical objects

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2008-11-26 v2 Astrophysics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

Most of the properties of black holes can be mimicked by horizonless compact objects such as gravastars and boson stars. We show that these ultra-compact objects develop a strong ergoregion instability when rapidly spinning. Instability timescales can be of the order of 0.1 seconds to 1 week for objects with mass M=1-10^6 solar masses and angular momentum J> 0.4 M^2. This provides a strong indication that ultra-compact objects with large rotation are black holes. Explosive events due to ergoregion instability have a well-defined gravitational-wave signature. These events could be detected by next-generation gravitational-wave detectors such as Advanced LIGO or LISA.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0709.0532,
  title  = {Ergoregion instability of ultra-compact astrophysical objects},
  author = {Vitor Cardoso and Paolo Pani and Mariano Cadoni and Marco Cavaglia},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0709.0532},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

14 pages, 8 Figures, 6 Tables. RevTeX4. v2: Shortened version, published on PRD, focused on gravastars and boson stars. Sections on wormholes and superspinars will appear elsewhere

R2 v1 2026-06-21T09:13:54.982Z