Bound states of a massive scalar field around topological stars form strictly normal modes, producing a hydrogen-like spectrum when the Compton wavelength exceeds the star size and localized states otherwise.
Black-Hole Bombs and Photon-Mass Bounds
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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 (mv<4x10^{-20} eV according to our most conservative estimate), and that spin measurements for the largest known supermassive black holes could further lower this bound to mv<10^{-22} eV. 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.
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Black-hole superradiance extracts energy via the ergoregion and can trigger instabilities with applications to dark matter, beyond-Standard-Model physics, and laboratory analogs.
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Gravitational Atoms from Topological Stars
Bound states of a massive scalar field around topological stars form strictly normal modes, producing a hydrogen-like spectrum when the Compton wavelength exceeds the star size and localized states otherwise.
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Superradiance -- the 2020 Edition
Black-hole superradiance extracts energy via the ergoregion and can trigger instabilities with applications to dark matter, beyond-Standard-Model physics, and laboratory analogs.