Implications of Photon Mass: Vortextrap Magnetization of Black Holes
Abstract
We discuss certain astrophysical implications of the photon mass. It offers a new mechanism of black hole magnetization, described as ``vortextrap magnetization" (VTM), which can generate a near-saturated magnetic field in astrophysical black holes. The extreme magnetic field is provided by a large number of Nielsen-Olesen type vortex lines piercing a black hole. In massive photon scenario the galactic magnetic field is a densely populated forest of overlapping magnetic flux tubes. These get trapped and collected by a black hole over a cosmological time-scale. The VTM mechanism neatly fits supermassive black holes with sizes matching the phenomenologically-acceptable values of the photon mass, and has implications for magnetic-field based particle acceleration. Even in absence of surrounding plasma, the near-saturated magnetic field is expected to result into an intense electromagnetic radiation as well as gravitational waves in black hole mergers. We provide a numerical simulation of the VTM phenomenon in a prototype system.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2502.15510,
title = {Implications of Photon Mass: Vortextrap Magnetization of Black Holes},
author = {Gia Dvali and Zaza N. Osmanov and Michael Zantedeschi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.15510},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
28 pages, 3 figures, ancillary video at https://youtu.be/KnxQLbEHmuU