Abstract
Generic extensions of the standard model predict the existence of ultralight bosonic degrees of freedom. Several ongoing experiments are aimed at detecting these particles or constraining their mass range. Here we show that massive vector fields around rotating black holes can give rise to a strong superradiant instability, which extracts angular momentum from the hole. The observation of supermassive spinning black holes imposes limits on this mechanism. We show that current supermassive black-hole spin estimates provide the tightest upper limits on the mass of the photon ( according to our most conservative estimate), and that spin measurements for the largest known supermassive black holes could further lower this bound to . Our analysis relies on a novel framework to study perturbations of rotating Kerr black holes in the slow-rotation regime, that we developed up to second order in rotation, and that can be extended to other spacetime metrics and other theories.
- Received 23 April 2012
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.131102
© 2012 American Physical Society
Synopsis
Black Holes Weigh the Possibility of a Massive Photon
Published 27 September 2012
New calculations of hypothetical “black hole bombs” set an upper limit on the possible mass of the photon and on the existence of certain dark matter candidates.
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