Massive spin-2 fields on black hole spacetimes: Instability of the Schwarzschild and Kerr solutions and bounds on the graviton mass

Richard Brito, Vitor Cardoso, and Paolo Pani
Phys. Rev. D 88, 023514 – Published 10 July 2013

Abstract

Massive bosonic fields of arbitrary spin are predicted by general extensions of the standard model. It has been recently shown that there exists a family of bimetric theories of gravity—including massive gravity—which are free of Boulware-Deser ghosts at the nonlinear level. This opens up the possibility to describe consistently the dynamics of massive spin-2 particles in a gravitational field. Within this context, we develop the study of massive spin-2 fluctuations—including massive gravitons—around Schwarzschild and slowly rotating Kerr black holes. Our work has two important outcomes. First, we show that the Schwarzschild geometry is linearly unstable for small tensor masses, against a spherically symmetric mode. Second, we provide solid evidence that the Kerr geometry is also generically unstable, both against the spherical mode and against long-lived superradiant modes. In the absence of nonlinear effects, the observation of spinning black holes bounds the graviton mass μ to be μ5×1023eV.

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  • Received 1 May 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.88.023514

© 2013 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Richard Brito1,*, Vitor Cardoso1,2,3,†, and Paolo Pani1,4,‡

  • 1CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa-UTL, Avenida Rovisco Pais 1, 1049 Lisboa, Portugal
  • 2Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics Waterloo, Ontario N2J 2W9, Canada
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi 38677, USA
  • 4Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

  • *richard.brito@ist.utl.pt
  • vitor.cardoso@ist.utl.pt
  • paolo.pani@ist.utl.pt

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Vol. 88, Iss. 2 — 15 July 2013

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