English

Kerr black holes with vector dark matter hair

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-07-31 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

We consider a massive vector-field perturbation on a Kerr black hole background. We fix the field's density at the edge of the black hole sphere of influence to model a bath of wave cold dark matter, from which the black hole can accrete endlessly. We employ the approach of Lunin, Frolov, Krtou\v{s}, Kubiz\v{n}\'{a}k, and Santos to separate the equations, and solve them with a mix of analytical and numerical techniques. We find that the field forms a density spike around the black hole with profile ρr3/2\rho \sim r^{-3/2}, consistent with dark matter spikes studied in the literature, which is not significantly distorted by spacetime rotation, except near the black hole's ergoregion. For any nonzero spin, an additional superradiant regime appears, in which co-rotating modes extract mass and angular momentum from the black hole. We find a mass \textit{extraction} rate as high as 10M/yr10\, M_\odot/\text{yr} in the superradiant regime for a 109M10^9\, M_\odot black hole. For large field masses, the rate at which the black-hole mass grows behaves similarly to the Schwarzschild case, reaching 100M/yr\sim 100\, M_\odot/\text{yr} for a 109M10^9\, M_\odot black hole. We compare these results to their scalar-field counterparts and discuss how they mix with the superradiant instability.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.00307,
  title  = {Kerr black holes with vector dark matter hair},
  author = {Fredric Hancock and Helvi Witek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.00307},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

24 pages, 9 figures