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Amplification of waves during reflection from a rotating "black hole"

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This seminal paper by A. A. Starobinskii investigates the phenomenon of superradiance—the amplification of waves reflected from a rotating Kerr black hole. The study establishes the threshold condition for wave amplification as ω < nΩ, calculates the exact reflection and transmission coefficients for massless scalar fields, and demonstrates the existence of strong oscillations near the critical frequency when the black hole rotates near maximal velocity.
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ST_CODE: 010028

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Amplification of waves during reflection from a rotating "black hole" A. A. Starobinskiĭ L. D. Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences (Submitted July 27, 1972) Zh. Eksp. Teor. Fiz. 64, 48-57 (January 1973) The effect whereby waves are amplified during reflection from a rotating "black hole" is investigated. This process is connected with the extraction of energy and momentum from a "black hole." The conditions for the existence of the effect are found. The amplification factor is computed for the model case of scalar waves. For waves with frequencies which do not satisfy the conditions for the existence of the effect, partial cross sections for their capture by the "black hole" are computed. 1. Interest in the investigation of the physical processes which take place in the vicinity of "black holes," i.e., collapsed stars, has of late increased considerably. The existence of such objects is predicted by the general theory of relativity (just as neutron stars, now identified as pulsars, are). It is quite probable that a "black hole" is the final phase of the evolution of any sufficiently massive star. It is also possible that "black holes" of cosmological origin exist. Among the diverse phenomena which can occur in the strong gravitational field near a "black hole," processes leading to the extraction of energy from a rotating "black hole" at the expense of its rotational energy and momentum are of special interest. The first such process was discovered by Penrose[1] and investigated by Christodoulou[2]. It is connected with the disintegration of a particle, which has entered the exosphere of a rotating "black hole," into two particles one of which is absorbed by the "black hole," while the other escapes to infinity with part of the rotational energy and momentum of the "black hole." Thus, the Penrose process requires the consideration of composite or unstable particles. Zel'dovich has recently pointed out[3] that the extraction of energy from a rotating "black hole" can in principle be accomplished with the aid of classical multipole waves, e.g., electromagnetic waves. Such a process does not need composite particles and is a distinctive wave analog of the Penrose process. Zel'dovich considered the scattering of an electromagnetic wave by a conducting cylinder rotating with an angular velocity Ω and showed that a wave with an orbital momentum n and frequency ω is reflected from the cylinder with an amplitude exceeding the amplitude of the incident wave if ω < nΩ. In the present paper we investigate directly the amplitude amplification effect for a wave reflected from a rotating "black hole" whose gravitational field is described by the Kerr metric (see formula (1)), and show that the condition for existence of the effect also has the form ω < nΩ if we introduce an angular velocity Ω of rotation of the "black hole" (see formula (12)). The magnitude of this effect is found for the model case of a massless scalar field satisfying the Klein-Gordon equation. A scalar field is used here because, unlike the electromagnetic field, its equation, as shown in Sec. 2, allows complete separation of the variables in the Kerr metric 1). This fact is not apparent, since a rotating "black hole" possesses only axial symmetry. We investigate with the aid of the exact solutions of the Klein-Gordon equation in the Kerr metric the behavior of the coefficient of reflection of the wave for low frequencies ω → 0, as well as in the vicinity of the critical point ω = nΩ, where the effect vanishes. Under certain conditions (see Sec. 3) the reflection coefficient strongly oscillates in the vicinity of the critical point. For a scalar wave the amplification effect turns out to be small: the reflection coefficient differs from unity by not more than a few per cent. Estimates show that the effect under consideration is also small for the electromagnetic wave 2). The formulas obtained also allow the computation of the partial cross sections for capture by a "black hole" of waves with ω and n which do not satisfy the condition for existence of the amplification effect. In particular, a physically clear result is obtained which indicates that the total cross section for capture by a "black hole" of scalar waves with wavelengths much greater than the gravitational radius of the "black hole" is equal to the surface area of the event horizon of the "black hole" (the dominant contribution then is, as always, made by the s-wave). In the computations, the gravitational field of the "black hole" was considered as an external field, i.e., the reaction of the scalar field on the metric was not considered. Under actual physical conditions the changes in the mass and momentum of the "black hole" on account of the wave amplification effect are negligible compared to the initial values. Indeed, it is easy to show that the mass of the collapsar can appreciably change as compared to M only in a time τ₁ ~ c⁷ / G² M ε, where M is the initial mass of the "black hole," ε is the energy density of the wave field around the "black hole," and G is the gravitational constant. For M ~ 1–100 M⊙ this time is much greater than the cosmological time t_H ~ 10¹⁸ sec even when extreme assumptions are made about the magnitude of ε. Thus, the investigated effect does not prevent the existence of rotating "black holes" in the Universe. 3) Furthermore, τ₁ is Mc² / ε r_g³ ≫ 1 times greater than the characteristic time τ₀ ~ r_g / c ~ GM / c³ during which the difference between the nonstationary metric of the collapsing star and the steady-state "black-hole" metric vanishes [7,8]. Finally, notice that in [3], Zel'dovich puts forward the hypothesis that there exists a quantum analog of the above-considered classical amplification effect, viz.,

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This seminal paper by A. A. Starobinskii investigates the phenomenon of superradiance—the amplification of waves reflected from a rotating Kerr black hole. The study establishes the threshold condition for wave amplification as ω < nΩ, calculates the exact reflection and transmission coefficients fo...