Related papers: Flares on the Black Holes
Dark matter around black holes can induce drag forces through dynamical friction and accretion, potentially affecting the orbital evolution and gravitational wave emission of binary systems. While dynamical friction from scalar field dark…
The singularity of a spherical (Schwarzschild) black hole is a surface, not a point. A freely-falling, non-rotating observer sees Hawking radiation with energy density diverging with radius as $\rho \propto r^{-6}$ near the Schwarzschild…
Models of Blazars based on the propagation of finite discontinuities or fronts in the Poynting flux jet from the innermost regions of an accretion disk around a black hole are discussed. Such fronts may be responsible for short time-scale…
Superradiant instability turns rotating astrophysical black holes into unique probes of light axions. We consider what happens when a light axion is coupled to a strongly coupled hidden gauge sector. In this case superradiance results in an…
We consider a scenario for the longest duration gamma ray bursts, resulting from the collapse of a massive star in a close binary system with a companion black hole. The primary black hole born during the core collapse is spun up and…
Qualitative arguments are presented to demonstrate that the energy density of magnetic fields in matter accreting onto a black hole inside the marginally stable orbit is automatically comparable to the rest-mass energy density of the…
Strong magnetic fields modify particle motion in the curved space-time of spinning black holes and change the stability conditions of circular orbits. We study conditions for magnetocentrifugal jet launching from accretion disks around…
Three recent papers have been collected here, discussing the possibility and properties of periodic modulation of a signal from accreting black holes surrounded by orbiting clumps of gas.
The internal structure of a slowly rotating, charged black hole that is undergoing mass inflation at its inner horizon is derived. The equations governing the angular behavior decouple from the radial behavior, so all conclusions regarding…
Microscopic black holes explode with their temperature varying inversely as their mass. Such explosions would lead to the highest temperatures in the present universe, all the way to the Planck energy. The possibility that a…
The X-ray mission Chandra has observed a dramatic X-ray flare -- a brightening by a factor of 50 for only three hours -- from Sgr A*, the Galactic Center supermassive black hole. Sgr A* has never shown variability of this amplitude in the…
We report on the third phase of our study of the neutrino-cooled hyperaccreting torus around a black hole that powers the jet in Gamma Ray Bursts. We focus on the influence of the black hole spin on the properties of the torus. The…
Clumps of material orbiting a black hole may be disturbed, somewhat like comets in the Kuiper belt, to relatively small periastron orbits. Each periastron passage changes the orbital parameters in such a way that the orbit becomes more and…
It is widely believed that the spin of black holes in X-ray binaries is mainly natal. A significant spin-up from accretion is not possible. If the secondary has a low mass, the black hole spin cannot change too much even if the black hole…
The discovery that the Galactic centre emits flares at various wavelengths represents a puzzle concerning their origin, but at the same time it is a relevant opportunity to investigate the environment of the nearest super-massive black…
Superradiance in black hole spacetimes can trigger instabilities. Here we show that, due to superradiance, small Kerr-anti-de Sitter black holes are unstable. Our demonstration uses a matching procedure, in a long wavelength approximation.
The electric charge on rotating black holes is calculated to be ~ BJ in the force-free configuration of Ghosh (2000), with a horizon flux of ~ BM^2. This charge is gravitationally weak for B ~ 10^{15} G, so that the Kerr metric applies.…
Highly spinning Kerr black holes with masses $M = 1 - 100\ M_{\odot}$ are subject to an efficient superradiant instability in the presence of bosons with masses $\mu \sim 10^{-10} - 10^{-12}\ {\rm eV}$. We observe that this matches the…
Extremal black holes tend to expel magnetic and electric fields. Fields are unable to reach the horizon because the length of the black hole throat blows up in the extremal limit. The length of the throat is related to the amount of…
We use the integrated spectrum of the X-ray background and quasars Spectral Energy Distribution to derive the contribution of quasars to the energy output of the Universe. We find a lower limit for the energy from accretion onto black holes…