Black holes as particle accelerators: a brief review

Abstract

Rapidly rotating Kerr black holes can accelerate particles to arbitrarily high energy if the angular momentum of the particle is fine-tuned to some critical value. This phenomenon is robust as it is founded on the basic properties of geodesic orbits around a near-extremal Kerr black hole. On the other hand, the maximum energy of the acceleration is subjected to several physical effects. There is convincing evidence that the particle acceleration to arbitrarily high energy is one of the universal properties of general near-extremal black holes. We also discuss gravitational particle acceleration in more general context. This article is intended to provide a pedagogical introduction to and a brief overview of this topic for non-specialists.

26 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity as a Topical Review, minor correction

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Cited by in corpus (22)

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• Center of Mass Energy of the Collision for Two General Geodesic Particles Around a Kerr-Newman-Taub-NUT Black Hole
• The Collisional Penrose Process
• Charged spinning black holes as accelerators of spinning particles
• High energy collision of two particles in wormhole spacetimes
• Collision of two general particles around a rotating regular Hayward's black holes
• ECO-spotting: looking for extremely compact objects with bosonic fields
• Escape probability of a photon emitted near the black hole horizon
• Rotating Black Hole in Kalb-Ramond Gravity: Constraining Parameters by Comparison with EHT Observations of Sgr A* and M87*
• Penrose process in Reissner-Nordström-AdS black hole spacetimes: Black hole energy factories and black hole bombs
• Complete classification of photon escape in the Kerr black hole spacetime
• High energy particle collisions in static, spherically symmetric black-hole-like wormholes
• Schwarzschild black hole surrounded by quintessential matter field as an accelerator for spinning particles
• Null geodesics in extremal Kerr-Newman black holes
• Timescale for trans-Planckian collisions in Kerr spacetime
• Quasilocal mass in scalar-tensor gravity: spherical symmetry
• The Aretakis constants and instability in general spherically symmetric extremal black hole spacetimes: higher multipole modes, late-time tails, and geometrical meanings
• Penrose and super-Penrose energy extraction from a Reissner-Nordström black hole spacetime with a cosmological constant through the BSW mechanism: Full story
• Collision of particles near charged MSW black hole in 2 + 1 dimensions
• Collisional Penrose process of extended test particles near an extremal Kerr black hole