Search

Black holes have sometimes been described as astrophysical particle accelerators because finite energy particles can collide near the horizon with divergent center-of-mass (CM) energy. The collisions are classified by the radial motion of the constituent particles at the moment of collision, with each class exhibiting a distinct near-horizon behavior. Divergence in the CM energy is sourced by the difference in the rate at which the collision radius approaches the horizon and the rate at which a particle's angular momentum is tuned to a critical value set by the superradiant bound. To produce a high energy collision around a near-extremal BH, at least one particle must approach criticality slower than the collision radius approaches the horizon. When both particles are ingoing or outgoing, it is additionally required that the particles approach criticality at different rates. Using a novel multi-scaling limit, we calculate the explicit form for the divergent CM energy., Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures

Finite-energy particles in free fall can collide with diverging center-of-mass energy near rapidly rotating black holes. What are the most salient observational signatures of this remarkable geometric effect? Here we revisit the problem from the standpoint of the near-horizon extreme Kerr geometry, where these collisions naturally take place. It is shown that the ingoing particle kinematics admits a simple, universal form. Given a scattering cross section, determination of emission properties is reduced to evaluation of particular integrals on the sky of a near-horizon orbiting particle. We subsequently apply this scheme to the example of single-photon bremsstrahlung, substantiating past results which indicate that ejected particles are observable, but their energies are bounded by the rest masses of the colliding particles. Our framework is readily applicable for any scattering process., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

On the basis of comparing eigenvalues of an operator ${\hat {\mathbf{\cal C}}}{}^{({\cal R})}$, that proved useful in distinguishing how off-shell 4D, $\cal N$ = 1 supermultiplets become off-shell 4D, $\cal N$ = 2 supermultiplets, the double tensor supermultiplet is shown to be radically different for other known multiplets. This suggests difficulties, if not impossibilities, to embed it into an off-shell structure., Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX twice

We consider monochromatic and isotropic photon emission from circular equatorial Kerr orbiters. We derive analytic expressions for the photon escape probability and the redshift-dependent total flux collected on the celestial sphere as a function of emission radius and black hole parameters. These calculations crucially involve the critical curve delineating the region of photon escape from that of photon capture in each emitter's sky. This curve generalizes to finite orbital radius the usual Kerr critical curve and displays interesting features in the limit of high spin, which we investigate by developing a perturbative expansion about extremality. Although the innermost stable circular orbit appears to approach the event horizon for very rapidly spinning black holes, we find in this regime that the photon escape probability tends to $5/12+1/(\sqrt{5}\pi)\arctan\sqrt{5/3}\approx54.65\%$. We also obtain a simple formula for the flux distribution received on the celestial sphere, which is nonzero. This confirms that the near-horizon geometry of a high-spin black hole is in principle observable. These results require us to introduce a novel type of near-horizon double-scaling limit. We explain the dip observed in the total flux at infinity as an imprint of the black hole: the black hole "bite"., Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures. v2: expanded discussion

The region of spacetime near the event horizon of a black hole can be viewed as a deep potential well at large gravitational redshift relative to distant observers. However, matter orbiting in this region travels at relativistic speeds and can impart a significant Doppler shift to its electromagnetic emission, sometimes resulting in a net observed blueshift at infinity. Thus, a black hole broadens the line emission from monochromatic sources in its vicinity into a smoothly decaying "red wing"--whose flux vanishes at large redshift--together with a "blue blade" that retains finite flux up to a sharp edge corresponding to the maximum observable blueshift. In this paper, we study the blue blade produced by isotropic monochromatic emitters on circular equatorial orbits around a Kerr black hole, and obtain simple relations describing how the maximum blueshift encodes black hole spin and inclination. We find that small values of the maximum blueshift yield an excellent probe of inclination, while larger values provide strong constraints on spin or inclination in terms of the other. These results bear direct relevance to ongoing and future observations aiming to infer the angular momentum of supermassive black holes from the broadening of their surrounding line emission., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is expected to soon produce polarimetric images of the supermassive black hole at the center of the neighboring galaxy M87. There are indications that this black hole is rapidly spinning. General relativity predicts that such a high-spin black hole has an emergent conformal symmetry near its event horizon. In this paper, we use this symmetry to analytically predict the polarized near-horizon emissions to be seen at the EHT and find a distinctive pattern of whorls aligned with the spin., Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures. v2: fixed conventions, matches published version