Resonant scattering of light in a near-black-hole metric

Abstract

We show that low-energy photon scattering from a body with radius R slightly larger than its Schwarzschild radius r_s resembles black-hole absorption. This absorption occurs via capture to one of the many long-lived, densely packed resonances that populate the continuum. The lifetimes and density of these meta-stable states tend to infinity in the limit r_s -> R. We determine the energy averaged cross-section for particle capture into these resonances and show that it is equal to the absorption cross-section for a Schwarzschild black hole. Thus, a non-singular static metric may trap photons for arbitrarily long times, making it appear completely `black' before the actual formation of a black hole.

6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Universality of high-energy absorption cross sections for black holes
• Dense spectrum of resonances and particle capture in a near-black-hole metric

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Exact solution of inverse-square-root potential $V\left(r\right)=-\frac{\alpha }{\sqrt{r}}$
• Resonance scattering and the passage to bound states in the field of near-black-hole objects