Related papers: Black Hole Portal into Hidden Valleys
Light bosonic fields may suffer an instability around a rotating compact object. This process, known as superradiance, leads to the exponential amplification of the field around a black hole or neutron star, while the spin of the central…
In the string axiverse scenario, light primordial black holes may spin up due to the Hawking emission of a large number of light (sub-MeV) axions. We show that this may trigger superradiant instabilities associated with a heavier axion…
Black hole superradiance, which only relies on gravitational interactions, can provide a powerful probe of the existence of ultralight bosons that are weakly coupled to ordinary matter. However, as a boson cloud grows through superradiance,…
We discuss the relation between the superradiance phenomenon and the instability of rotating black holes in higher dimensions. In particular, we point out that the superradiant instability of a massless scalar field around a simply rotating…
Ultralight bosons and axion-like particles appear naturally in different scenarios and could solve some long-standing puzzles. Their detection is challenging, and all direct methods hinge on unknown couplings to the Standard Model of…
Spinning black holes can transfer a significant fraction of their energy to ultralight bosonic fields via superradiance, condensing them in a co-rotating structure or "cloud". This mechanism turns black holes into powerful particle…
Motivated by possible existence of string axions with ultralight masses, we study gravitational radiation from an axion cloud around a rotating black hole (BH). The axion cloud extracts the rotation energy of the BH by superradiant…
Light axions ($m_a \lesssim 10^{-10}$ eV) can form dense clouds around rapidly rotating astrophysical black holes via a mechanism known as rotational superradiance. The coupling between axions and photons induces a parametric resonance,…
Rapidly rotating black holes are known to develop instabilities in the presence of a sufficiently light boson, a process which becomes efficient when the boson's Compton wavelength is roughly the size of the black hole. This phenomenon,…
We analyze the dynamics and observational signatures of axion clouds formed via the superradiant instability around primordial black holes, focusing on the mass range $10^{14}-10^{18}$ kg where the latter may account for all the dark…
Light feebly-coupled bosonic particles can efficiently extract the rotational energy of rapidly spinning black holes on sub-astrophysical timescales via a phenomenon known as black hole superradiance. In the case of light axions, the feeble…
We study the superradiant instability of a massive boson around a spinning black hole in full general relativity without assuming spatial symmetries. We focus on the case of a rapidly spinning black hole in the presence of a vector boson…
Supermassive black holes with masses of millions to billions of solar masses are commonly found in the centers of galaxies. Astronomers seek to image jet formation using radio interferometry, but still suffer from insufficient angular…
An inhomogeneous pseudo-scalar field configuration behaves like an optically active medium. Consequently, if a light ray passes through an axion cloud surrounding a Kerr black hole, it may experience a polarization-dependent bending. We…
Ultralight bosonic fields are compelling dark-matter candidates and arise in a variety of beyond-Standard-Model scenarios. These fields can tap energy and angular momentum from spinning black holes through superradiant instabilities, during…
It is known that magnetic fields exist near black holes and photons can go around black holes due to strong gravity. Utilizing these facts, we can probe hypothetical pseudoscalar particles, so-called axions. In fact, photons can be…
The most plausible mechanism for triggering the outburst of black hole candidate X-ray transients is the ionization thermal instability. The disk instability models can give the observed mass flow in quiescence, but not the X-ray spectrum.…
We study the superradiant scattering of gravitational waves by a nearly extremal black hole (dimensionless spin $a=0.99$) by numerically solving the full Einstein field equations, thus including backreaction effects. This allows us to study…
Ultralight bosons can condense to form the so-called bosonic clouds around spinning black holes by superradiance instability. When quantum effects are taken into account, the classical black holes were replaced by exotic compact objects…
Black hole superradiance is a powerful probe of light, weakly-coupled hidden sector particles. Many candidate particles, such as axions, generically have self-interactions that can influence the evolution of the superradiant instability. As…