On spin dependence of relativistic acoustic geometry

Abstract

This work makes the first ever attempt to understand the influence of the black hole background spacetime in determining the fundamental properties of the embedded relativistic acoustic geometry. To accomplish such task, we investigate the role of the spin angular momentum of the astrophysical black hole (the Kerr parameter a—a representative feature of the background black hole metric) in estimating the value of the acoustic surface gravity (the representative feature of the corresponding analogue spacetime). Since almost all astrophysical black holes are supposed to posses some degree of intrinsic rotation, the influence of the Kerr parameter on classical analogue models is very important to understand. We study the general relativistic, axially symmetric, non-self-gravitating inflow of the hydrodynamic fluid onto a rotating astrophysical black hole from the dynamical systems point of view. In this work the location of the acoustic horizon inside such fluid flow is identified and the associated acoustic surface gravity is estimated. We study the dependence of such surface gravity as a function of the Kerr parameter as well as with other dynamical and thermodynamic variables governing the fluid flow under strong gravity, and demonstrate that for retrograde flow, the surface gravity (and hence the associated analogue Hawking temperature) correlates with the black hole spin in general, whereas for the prograde flow, the surface gravity as well as the analogue temperature correlates with the black hole spin for slow to moderately rotating holes, but anti-correlates with the spin for fast to extremely rotating holes. We found that for certain values of the initial boundary conditions, more than one acoustic horizons, namely two black hole types and one white hole type, may form, and the surface gravity may become formally infinite at the acoustic white hole. We discuss the possible connection between the corresponding analogue Hawking temperature and astrophysically relevant observables associated with the spectral signature of the black hole candidates. Our result indicates that the modified dispersion relation evaluated at the close proximity of the acoustic horizon (and hence the nonuniversal feature of Hawking-like effects) is a sensitive function of the spin angular momentum of the astrophysical black hole. We propose that the black hole spin dependence of such dispersion relation may be used to distinguish a corotating flow from a counter rotating flow for axisymmetric accretion onto a Kerr black hole.