How fast can a black hole rotate?
Abstract
Kerr black holes have their angular momentum, , bounded by their mass, : . There are, however, known black hole solutions violating this Kerr bound. We propose a very simple universal bound on the rotation, rather than on the angular momentum, of four-dimensional, stationary and axisymmetric, asymptotically flat black holes, given in terms of an appropriately defined horizon linear velocity, . The bound is simply that cannot exceed the velocity of light. We verify the bound for known black hole solutions, including some that violate the Kerr bound, and conjecture that only extremal Kerr black holes saturate the bound.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1505.04189,
title = {How fast can a black hole rotate?},
author = {Carlos A. R. Herdeiro and Eugen Radu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1505.04189},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
10 pages, 2 figures, Essay written for the Gravity Research Foundation 2015 Awards for Essays on Gravitation and selected for Honorable Mention