Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 2310.20043

On the Universality of Energy Extraction from Black Hole Spacetimes

Abstract

The launching of astrophysical jets provides the most compelling observational evidence for direct extraction of black hole (BH) spin energy via the Blandford-Znajek (BZ) mechanism. Whilst it is known that spinning Kerr BHs within general relativity (GR) follow the BZ jet power relation, the nature of BH energy extraction in general theories of gravity has not been adequately addressed. This study performs the first comprehensive investigation of the BZ jet power relation by utilizing a generalized BH spacetime geometry which describes parametric deviations from the Kerr metric of GR, yet recovers the Kerr metric in the limit that all deviation parameters vanish. Through performing and analyzing an extensive suite of three-dimensional covariant magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations of magnetized gas accretion onto these generalized BH spacetimes we find that the BZ jet power relation still holds, in some instances yielding jet powers far in excess of what can be produced by even extremal Kerr BHs. It is shown that independent variation of the frame-dragging rate of the BH can enhance or suppress the effects of BH spin, and by extension of frame-dragging. This variation greatly enhances or suppresses the observed jet power and underlying photon ring image asymmetry, introducing a previously unexplored yet important degeneracy in BH parameter inference. Finally we show that sufficiently accurate measurements of the jet power, accretion rate and photon ring properties from supermassive BHs can potentially break this degeneracy, highlighting the need of independent investigations of BH frame-dragging from observations.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Koushik Chatterjee, Ziri Younsi, Prashant Kocherlakota, Ramesh Narayan. 2025-10-07. On the Universality of Energy Extraction from Black Hole Spacetimes. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213%2Fae0740

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Quantum Correlations of Neutrinos in the Kerr-Newman Space-time

Quantum phases establish a connection between gravitation and quantum information, offering a novel avenue for exploring the properties of space-time. In this paper, we investigate the quantum correlations (QCs) of neutrinos in the Kerr--Newman space-time for both zero- and nonzero-angular-momentum propagation. The results show that, for zero-angular-momentum propagation, the oscillation periods of the survival probability and QCs progressively decrease with propagation distance in the inward direction. In the outward direction, increasing $M$ lengthens the oscillation periods of $P_{ν_e\rightarrowν_e}$, entanglement, and the monogamy of nonlocality, whereas increasing the angular momentum $a$ or charge $Q$ shortens them. For nonzero-angular-momentum propagation, the metric parameters also generate local profile modulations through additional two-path interference terms, rather than merely rescaling the oscillation period. Furthermore, we find that, despite differences in their ranges of variation, entanglement and coherence exhibit highly consistent oscillatory behavior in both propagation cases. These findings provide a comprehensive understanding of neutrino-based relativistic quantum information.

gr-qc

Dynamical tidal response of neutron stars: From effective field theory to gravitational waveforms

We investigate the fully relativistic dynamical tidal response of neutron stars up to second order in the frequency. Combining the worldline effective field theory for extended gravitating bodies with perturbation theory of relativistic stellar models, we derive the tidal deformation induced by an external time-dependent field, including a universal logarithmic running term. In the effective theory, we work in dimensional regularization and, through a consistent matching procedure, obtain for the first time the complete leading-order dynamical tidal corrections to both the conservative dynamics and the gravitational-wave signal of compact binaries, including the scheme-dependent finite terms in addition to the running. We show that, in the relativistic regime, dynamical effects cannot be fully captured by mode excitations alone. The magnitude of the additional contribution depends on the stellar compactness, the equation of state, and the running term. Dynamical Love numbers are significantly enhanced with respect to their static counterparts for relatively small compactness. As a result, although they formally enter the gravitational-wave phase at eighth post-Newtonian order, dynamical tidal effects yield a nonnegligible contribution during the late inspiral. Using a Fisher-matrix analysis, we show that third-generation detectors such as the Einstein Telescope could measure dynamical Love numbers for a range of neutron-star masses and equations of state. Conversely, neglecting these effects can lead to significant biases in the inference of static Love numbers, and hence on the nuclear equation of state. Our results highlight the importance of dynamical tidal effects for high-precision gravitational-wave modeling with future detectors.

gr-qc

Probing quantum chaos near a wormhole throat with a circular string

We investigate whether quantum fluctuations of a circular probe string develop a quantum-chaotic response while traversing a wormhole throat. The classical circular-string embedding is periodic and radially stable, but its two physical transverse polarizations experience time-dependent tidal potentials. Expanding the world-sheet action to quadratic order, we canonically quantize these modes and construct out-of-time-ordered correlator(OTOC) amplitudes from their unequal-time commutators. For the Ellis--Bronnikov wormhole, both polarizations exhibit finite intervals of approximately exponential OTOC growth associated with the first throat passage. The corresponding dimensionless rate measured with respect to physical time is positive over the parameter range studied and generally decreases as the probe energy is increased relative to the throat scale. In the global-monopole extension, increasing the solid-angle deficit narrows the band of locally amplifiable modes and suppresses the extracted rates; a sufficiently strong defect can nearly quench the radial signal, while the angular channel retains a polarization-dependent non-monotonic structure when the energy-to-throat-scale ratio is small. These quantities characterize finite-time dynamical sensitivity in the Gaussian fluctuation sector and should not be identified with asymptotic many-body chaos or a thermodynamic phase transition. Although the numerical analysis uses two representative wormhole geometries, the construction depends only on covariant world-sheet fluctuations and real-time commutators. It therefore provides a transferable, non-holographic framework for applying quantum-chaos diagnostics directly to quantum probes in curved spacetimes.

gr-qc