Black hole as coherent signal amplifier

Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theory is an interesting and well-motivated theoretical laboratory to explore the impact of new fundamental degrees of freedom in the context of testing the no-hair conjecture, due to the existence of hairy black hole solutions together with the propagation of scalar, vector and tensor modes. In this paper we compute the quasinormal mode spectrum of static and slowly rotating black holes for generic values of the dilaton coupling, within a weak electric charge approximation. Our results suggest that these spacetimes are stable for generic values of the dilaton coupling and the black hole charge. We also show that while gravitational modes are only weakly affected by the coupling with the dilaton, the spectrum of electromagnetic modes exhibits a more pronounced dilaton-dependent breaking of isospectrality between the axial and polar sectors. We further show that the gravitational quasinormal modes are well approximated by the properties of unstable null circular geodesics in those spacetimes, while the treatment of electromagnetic and scalar modes can be simplified by a suitably modified Dudley-Finley scheme for the perturbed equations.

Context. Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULX) are extragalactic objects with observed X-ray luminosities largely above the Eddington limit for a 10 M⊙ black hole. Currently, it is believed that ULXs host super-Eddington accreting neutron stars or stellar mass black holes. However, the exact proportion of the two populations of compact objects is not yet known. Aims. We investigate the properties of the ULX NGC 4559 X7 (hereafter X7), which shows flux variability up to a factor of five on both long (months to years) and short (hours to days) timescales. A flaring activity was also observed during the highest flux epochs of the source. Flares are unpredictable. They have different durations (but similar rising and decay times) and are all flat topped in flux. The latter suggests that at the flare peaks, there is likely a common switch-off mechanism for the accretion onto the compact object. Methods. We analysed all available XMM-Newton and Swift/XRT observations in order to fully investigate the spectral and temporal evolution of X7, looking for short- and long-term variability. We applied a Lomb-Scargle search to look for long-term periodicities. We also looked for coherent signals through accelerated searches that included orbital corrections. We described the X7 spectral properties with two thermal components plus a cut-off power-law model. Results. We found three well-defined spectral states where the spectral variability is mainly driven by the two harder components, with the thermal one clearly following a correlation between its temperature and luminosity. In addition, a pulsed signal at 2.6 s–2.7 s was detected in two XMM-Newton observations. The significance of these coherent signals is relatively weak, but they are found in two different observations with the same parameter space for the orbital properties. If confirmed, the pulsation would imply a high spin-down of 10−9 s s−1, which could be extreme amongst the known pulsating ULXs, and X7 would become a new extragalactic ULX pulsar. Conclusions. We discuss the spectral and temporal results of X7 in the context of super-Eddington accretion onto a stellar-mass compact object. In particular, we suggest that the source might likely host a neutron star.

The quasinormal modes of massless scalar field in rotating Bardeen and Hayward regular black holes are studied. The fundamental quasinormal modes and $$n=1$$ n = 1 first overtone quasinormal modes are calculated with the matrix method. Influences of model parameters on the quasinormal modes are also discussed. The quasinormal modes in rotating Hayward black hole have just percent-level increase compared with that in the Kerr black hole case due to the deviation parameter g , while there is ten-percent-level increase for the quasinormal modes in the rotating Bardeen black hole due to $$g_*$$ g ∗ . It is found that the monotonicity of fundamental and $$n=1$$ n = 1 quasinormal modes in the rotating Bardeen black hole is different. An interesting crossing phenomenon is also found for QNMs with different multipole numbers when we vary the parameter $$g_*$$ g ∗ in the Bardeen case. The corotating and counterrotating Lyapunov exponents of the equatorial null circular geodesics in the two rotating black holes are also calculated. Then, the connection between the imaginary parts and real parts of the eikonal quasinormal modes, particularly the first overtone ones, and the properties of the null geodesics in the two rotating regular black holes are explicitly verified.

Treating the black hole molecules as working substance and considering its phase structure, we study the black hole heat engine by a charged anti-de Sitter black hole. In the reduced temperature-entropy chart, it is found that the work, heat, and efficiency of the engine are free of the black hole charge. Applying the Rankine cycle with or without a back pressure mechanism to the black hole heat engine, the compact formula for the efficiency is obtained. And the heat, work and efficiency are worked out. The result shows that the black hole engine working along the Rankine cycle with a back pressure mechanism has a higher efficiency. This provides a novel and efficient mechanism to produce the useful mechanical work, and such black hole heat engine may act as a possible energy source for the high energy astrophysical phenomena near the black hole.

One of the quantum effects of black holes is Hawking radiation. Scattering of Hawking radiation from a gravitational potential barrier, resulting from the curvature of spacetime, is analogous to the scattering of matter wave from a potential barrier in quantum mechanics. In the context of black hole radiation, the transmission probability is known as greybody factor. In this dissertation, rigorous bounds on greybody factors for non-rotating black holes, Kerr-Newman black holes, and dirty black holes are derived. For non-rotating black holes, including dirty black holes, calculations of rigorous bounds on the greybody factors are simple. However, for a Kerr-Newman black hole, which is a type of rotating black holes, the situations are more complicated since the rigorous bounds on the greybody factors depend on scalar angular momentum mode. Moreover, there is a new phenomenon called super-radiance that arises in rotating black holes, which is absent in the non-rotating black holes.

Analyzing test particles falling into a Kerr black hole, we study gravitational waves in Brans-Dicke theory of gravity. First we consider a test particle plunging with a constant polar angle into a rotating black hole and calculate the waveform and emitted energy of both scalar and tensor modes of gravitational radiation. We find that the waveform as well as the energy of the scalar gravitational waves weakly depends on the rotation parameter of a black hole $a$ and on the polar angle. Second, using a model of a nonspherical dust shell of test particles falling into a Kerr black hole, we study when the scalar modes dominate. When a black hole is rotating, the tensor modes do not vanish even for a ``spherically symmetric'' shell; instead a slightly oblate shell minimizes their energy but with a nonzero finite value, which depends on the Kerr parameter $a$. As a result, we find that the scalar modes dominate only for highly spherical collapse, but they never exceed the tensor modes unless the Brans-Dicke parameter ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathrm{BD}}\ensuremath{\lesssim}750$ for $a/M=0.99$ or unless ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathrm{BD}}\ensuremath{\lesssim}20000$ for $a/M=0.5$, where $M$ is the mass of a black hole. We conclude that the scalar gravitational waves with ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\mathrm{BD}}\ensuremath{\lesssim}$ several thousands do not dominate except for very limited situations (observation from the face-on direction of a test particle falling into a Schwarzschild black hole or highly spherical dust shell collapse into a Kerr black hole). Therefore, observation of polarization is also required when we determine the theory of gravity by the observation of gravitational waves.

In general relativity, astrophysical black holes (BHs) are simple objects, described by just their mass and spin. These simple solutions are not exclusive to general relativity, as they also appear in theories that allow for an extra scalar degree of freedom. Recently, it was shown that some theories which couple a scalar field with the Gauss–Bonnet invariant can have the same classic black hole solutions from general relativity as well as hairy BHs. These scalarized solutions can be stable, having an additional “charge” term that has an impact on the gravitational-wave emission by black hole binaries. In this paper, we overview black hole solutions in scalar-Gauss–Bonnet gravity, considering self-interacting terms for the scalar field. We present the mode analysis for the monopolar and dipolar perturbations around the Schwarzschild black hole in scalar-Gauss–Bonnet, showing the transition between stable and unstable solutions. We also present the time-evolution of scalar Gaussian wave packets, analyzing the impact of the scalar-Gauss–Bonnet term in their evolution. We then present some scalarized solutions, showing that nonlinear coupling functions and self-interacting terms can stabilize them. Finally, we compute the light-ring frequency and the Lyapunov exponent, which possibly estimate the black hole quasinormal modes in the eikonal limit.

We study superradiant scattering for a charged scalar field subject to Robin (mixed) boundary conditions on a charged BTZ black hole background. Scalar field modes having a real frequency do not exhibit superradiant scattering, independent of the boundary conditions applied. For scalar field modes with a complex frequency, no superradiant scattering occurs if the black hole is static. After exploring some regions of the parameter space, we provide evidence for the existence of superradiantly scattered modes with complex frequencies for a charged and rotating BTZ black hole. Most of the superradiantly scattered modes we find satisfy Robin (mixed) boundary conditions, but there are also superradiantly scattered modes with complex frequencies satisfying Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions. We explore the effect of the black hole and scalar field charge on the outgoing energy flux of these superradiantly scattered modes, and also investigate their stability.

In this paper, we study the heat engine where a charged AdS black hole surrounded by dark energy is the working substance and the mechanical work is done via the PdV term in the first law of black hole thermodynamics in the extended phase space. We first investigate the effects of a kind of dark energy (quintessence field in this paper) on the efficiency of the RN-AdS black holes as the heat engine defined as a rectangular closed path in the P–V plane. We get the exact efficiency formula and find that the quintessence field can improve the heat engine efficiency, which will increase as the field density rho _q grows. At some fixed parameters, we find that a larger volume difference between the smaller black holes(V_1) and the bigger black holes(V_2 ) will lead to a lower efficiency, while the bigger pressure difference P_1-P_4 will make the efficiency higher, but it is always smaller than 1 and will never be beyond the Carnot efficiency, which is the maximum value of the efficiency constrained by thermodynamics laws; this is consistent to the heat engine in traditional thermodynamics. After making some special choices for the thermodynamical quantities, we find that the increase of the electric charge Q and the normalization factor a can also promote the heat engine efficiency, which would infinitely approach the Carnot limit when Q or a goes to infinity.

After recent observational events like the LIGO-Virgo detections of gravitational waves and the shadow image of the M87* supermassive black hole by event horizon telescope (EHT), the theoretical study of black holes was significantly improved. Quantities as quasinormal frequencies, shadows, and light deflection become more important to analyze black hole models. In this context, an interesting scenario to study is a black hole in the bumblebee gravity. The bumblebee vector field imposes a spontaneous symmetry breaking that allows the field to acquire a vacuum expectation value that generates Lorentz Violation (LV) into the black hole. In order to compute the quasinormal modes (QNMs) via the WKB method, we obtain the Reege-Wheeler's equation with a bell-shaped potential for this black hole. Both QNMs, the scalar and tensorial modes, are computed for the black hole in the bumblebee scenario. The results obtained in bumblebee gravity are compared to Schwarzschild and Einstein-aether black holes. In general, the LV parameter decreases the real part of frequency for scalar and gravitational perturbations. The modulus of imaginary parts is increased with the LV parameter for the scalar field and decreased by the gravitational field. Moreover, the time-domain perturbations are studied and damping profiles are shown.

We study the magnetospheric evolution of a nonaccreting spinning black hole (BH) with an initially inclined split monopole magnetic field by means of 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations. This serves as a model for a neutron star (NS) collapse or a BH–NS merger remnant after the inherited magnetosphere has settled into a split monopole field creating a striped wind. We show that the initially inclined split monopolar current sheet aligns over time with the BH equatorial plane. The inclination angle evolves exponentially toward alignment, with an alignment timescale that is inversely proportional to the square of the BH angular velocity, where higher spin results in faster alignment. Furthermore, magnetic reconnection in the current sheet leads to exponential decay of event-horizon-penetrating magnetic flux with nearly the same timescale for all considered BH spins. In addition, we present relations for the BH mass and spin in terms of the period and alignment timescale of the striped wind. The explored scenario of a rotating, aligning, and reconnecting current sheet can potentially lead to multimessenger electromagnetic counterparts to a gravitational-wave event due to the acceleration of particles powering high-energy radiation, plasmoid mergers resulting in coherent radio signals, and pulsating emission due to the initial misalignment of the BH magnetosphere.

We propose a simple procedure for evaluating the main attributes of a Schwarzschild's black hole: Bekenstein-Hawking entropy, Hawking temperature and Bekenstein's quantization of the surface area. We make use of the condition that the circumference of a great circle on the black hole horizon contains finite and whole number of the corresponding reduced Compton's wavelength. It is essentially analogous to Bohr's quantization postulate in Bohr's atomic model interpreted by de Broglie's relation. It implies the standard meaning of the black hole entropy corresponding to surface of the quantum variation of the great circles on the black hole horizon surface area. We present black hole radiation in the form conceptually analogous to Bohr's postulate on the photon emission by discrete quantum jump of the electron within the Old quantum theory. This enables us, in accordance with Heisenberg's uncertainty relation and Bohr's correspondence principle, to make a rough estimate of the time interval for black hole evaporation, which turns out very close to time interval predicted by the standard Hawking's theory. Our calculations confirm Bekenstein's semiclassical result for the energy quantization, in variance with Frasca's (2005) calculations. Finally we speculate about the possible source-energy distribution within the black hole horizon.

Low Luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei (LLAGNs) possess the characteristic features of more luminous Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) but exhibit a much lower nuclear Halpha luminosity than their more luminous counterparts. M87 (NGC 4486) and Centaurus A (NGC 5128, CenA) are well-studied nearby LLAGNs. As an additional feature they show gamma-radiation up to TeV (10^{12}eV) energies, but the origin of this radiation is not resolved. The coincident observation of a radio and TeV flare in M87 suggests that the TeV radiation is produced within around 50-100 gravitational radii of the central supermassive black hole, depending on the assumed value of the mass of the black hole. Strong radiation fields can be produced in the central region of an (LL)AGN, e.g., by the accretion flow around the black hole, the jet plasma, or stars closely orbiting the black hole. These radiation fields can lead to the absorption of emitted TeV photons, and in fact high optical depths of such fields can make TeV detection from inner regions impossible. In this paper we consider the accretion flow around the black hole as the most prominent source for such a radiation field and we accordingly calculate the probability for absorption of TeV photons produced near the black holes in M87 and CenA assuming a low luminosity Shakura-Sunyaev Disk (SSD). We find that the results are very different for between the two LLAGNs. While the inner region of M87 is transparent for TeV radiation up to 15TeV, the optical depth in CenA is >> 1, leading to an absorption of TeV photons that might be produced near the central black hole. These results imply either that the TeV gamma production sites and processes are different for both sources, or that LLAGN black holes do not accrete (at least only) in form of a low luminosity SSD.

Recently, the Einstein–Maxwell–scalar model with a non-minimal coupling between the scalar and Maxwell fields was explored. As a result, a new class of black hole solutions with scalar hair was discovered. By fixing the mass of a black hole and taking the maximum allowable charge, an extremal black hole was obtained. Interestingly, this extremal black hole not only possesses an event horizon with a non-zero surface area but also exhibits a non-zero Hawking temperature. This unique type of extremal black hole is referred to as a maximal warm hole (MWH). In this paper, we revisit this model and examine these black holes with highly excited state fields. We discovered that an excited state MWH solution can also be obtained under extremal conditions. We investigate the range of existence for excited states and analyze their relevant physical properties.

In this work we present a simple approximate method for analysis of the basic dynamical and thermodynamical characteristics of Kerr-Newman black hole. Instead of the complete dynamics of the black hole self-interaction, we consider only the stable (stationary) dynamical situations determined by condition that the black hole (outer) horizon 'circumference' holds the integer number of the reduced Compton wave lengths corresponding to mass spectrum of a small quantum system (representing the quantum of the black hole self-interaction). Then, we show that Kerr-Newman black hole entropy represents simply the ratio of the sum of static part and rotation part of the mass of black hole on one hand, and the ground mass of small quantum system on the other hand. Also we show that Kerr-Newman black hole temperature represents the negative value of the classical potential energy of gravitational interaction between a part of black hole with reduced mass and a small quantum system in the ground mass quantum state. Finally, we suggest a bosonic great canonical distribution of the statistical ensemble of given small quantum systems in the thermodynamical equilibrium with (macroscopic) black hole as thermal reservoir. We suggest that, practically, only the ground mass quantum state is significantly degenerate while all the other, excited mass quantum states, are non-degenerate. Kerr-Newman black hole entropy is practically equivalent to the ground mass quantum state degeneration. Given statistical distribution admits a rough (qualitative) but simple modeling of Hawking radiation of the black hole too.