Nonequatorial charged particle confinement around Kerr black holes

Abstract

We analyze the nonequatorial charged particle dynamics around a rotating black hole in the presence of an external magnetic field, the latter being given by Wald's exact analytical solution to the Maxwell's equations in the Kerr background. At variance with the corresponding Schwarzschild case, the behavior of the particle becomes here markedly charge-sign dependent, and the more so the more the Kerr parameter increases. The interplay between the rotating black hole and the magnetic field is shown to provide a mechanism both for selective charge ejection in axially collimated jetlike trajectories, and for selective charge confinement into nonequatorial bound orbits around the hole; the possibility of such a confinement allows the fate of an accreting particle to not necessarily be doomed: infall into the hole can be prevented, and the neutrality of the Kerr source could therefore be preserved, while the charge is safely parked into bound cross-equatorial orbits all around it.