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Superradiant Instability and Backreaction of Massive Vector Fields around Kerr Black Holes

William E. East and Frans Pretorius
Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 041101 – Published 24 July 2017
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Abstract

We study the growth and saturation of the superradiant instability of a complex, massive vector (Proca) field as it extracts energy and angular momentum from a spinning black hole, using numerical solutions of the full Einstein-Proca equations. We concentrate on a rapidly spinning black hole (a=0.99) and the dominant m=1 azimuthal mode of the Proca field, with real and imaginary components of the field chosen to yield an axisymmetric stress-energy tensor and, hence, spacetime. We find that in excess of 9% of the black hole’s mass can be transferred into the field. In all cases studied, the superradiant instability smoothly saturates when the black hole’s horizon frequency decreases to match the frequency of the Proca cloud that spontaneously forms around the black hole.

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  • Received 19 April 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.041101

© 2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics

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Spinning Black Holes May Grow Hair

Published 24 July 2017

A spinning black hole may lose up to 9% of its mass by spontaneously growing “hair” in the form of excitations of a hypothetical particle field with a tiny mass.

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Authors & Affiliations

William E. East1 and Frans Pretorius2

  • 1Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada
  • 2Department of Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA

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Issue

Vol. 119, Iss. 4 — 28 July 2017

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