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Published on: November 15, 2013
Black-hole bombs and photon-mass bounds
Paolo Pani1, Vitor Cardoso, Leonardo Gualtieri
1CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa-UTL, Lisboa, Portugal. paolo.pani@ist.utl.pt
Physical Review Letters
|October 4, 2012
Summary
Supermassive black hole spin measurements constrain the mass of ultralight vector fields, like the photon. Current data set the tightest upper limits, with future observations promising even stronger constraints on these exotic particles.
Area of Science:
- Theoretical Physics
- Astrophysics
- Particle Physics
Background:
- Standard Model extensions predict ultralight bosonic particles.
- Detecting these particles or their mass range is an active area of research.
- Rotating black holes can exhibit phenomena influenced by surrounding fields.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of massive vector fields on rotating black holes.
- To establish observational constraints on the mass of ultralight bosonic particles using black hole properties.
- To develop a theoretical framework for studying black hole perturbations.
Main Methods:
- Developed a novel framework to study perturbations of rotating Kerr black holes.
- Analyzed the superradiant instability mechanism in the slow-rotation regime (up to second order).
- Utilized current observational estimates of supermassive black hole spins.
Main Results:
- Massive vector fields around rotating black holes trigger a strong superradiant instability, extracting angular momentum.
- Supermassive black hole spin estimates provide the tightest upper limits on the photon mass (m(v) <~ 4x10^-20 eV).
- Future spin measurements of larger black holes could refine this limit to m(v) <~ 10^-22 eV.
Conclusions:
- Observational constraints from supermassive black hole spins offer a powerful method to limit the mass of ultralight vector bosons.
- The developed theoretical framework is adaptable to other spacetime metrics and theories.
- This research bridges particle physics and general relativity, providing a new avenue for exploring fundamental physics.
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