Spinning super-massive objects in galactic nuclei up to $a_* > 1$
Abstract
Nowadays we believe that a typical galaxy contains about stellar-mass black holes and a single super-massive black hole at its center. According to general relativity, these objects are characterized solely by their mass and by their spin parameter . A fundamental limit for a black hole in general relativity is the Kerr bound , but the accretion process can spin it up to . If a compact object is not a black hole, the Kerr bound does not hold and in this letter I provide some evidences suggesting that the accretion process could spin the body up to . While this fact should be negligible for stellar-mass objects, some of the super-massive objects at the center of galaxies may actually be super-spinning bodies exceeding the Kerr bound. Such a possibility can be tested by gravitational wave detectors like LISA or by sub-millimeter very long baseline interferometry facilities.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1101.1364,
title = {Spinning super-massive objects in galactic nuclei up to $a_* > 1$},
author = {Cosimo Bambi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1101.1364},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures. v2: refereed version