Black hole supercolliders

Abstract

We show that collisions between particles free falling from infinity and a disk of material plunging off the retrograde innermost stable circular orbit of a near-extremal Kerr black hole is the unique astronomically natural way in which to create a gravitational particle accelerator with center of mass energies at the $10$'s to $100$'s of teraelectronvolt range, in other words a supercollider.

4 pages, 3 figures. Version accepted in Physical Review Letters