Electromagnetic Chirps from Neutron Star-Black Hole Mergers.

We calculate the electromagnetic signal of a gamma-ray flare coming from the surface of a neutron star shortly before merger with a black hole companion. Using a new version of the Monte Carlo radiation transport code Pandurata that incorporates dynamic spacetimes, we integrate photon geodesics from the neutron star surface until they reach a distant observer or are captured by the black hole. The gamma-ray light curve is modulated by a number of relativistic effects, including Doppler beaming and gravitational lensing. Because the photons originate from the inspiraling neutron star, the light curve closely resembles the corresponding gravitational waveform: a chirp signal characterized by a steadily increasing frequency and amplitude. We propose to search for these electromagnetic chirps using matched filtering algorithms similar to those used in LIGO data analysis.

The Collisional Penrose Process.

Shortly after the discovery of the Kerr metric in 1963, it was realized that a region existed outside of the black hole's event horizon where no time-like observer could remain stationary. In 1969, Roger Penrose showed that particles within this ergosphere region could possess negative energy, as measured by an observer at infinity. When captured by the horizon, these negative energy particles essentially extract mass and angular momentum from the black hole. While the decay of a single particle within the ergosphere is not a particularly efficient means of energy extraction, the collision of multiple particles can reach arbitrarily high center-of-mass energy in the limit of extremal black hole spin. The resulting particles can escape with high efficiency, potentially erving as a probe of high-energy particle physics as well as general relativity. In this paper, we briefly review the history of the field and highlight a specific astrophysical application of the collisional Penrose process: the potential to enhance annihilation of dark matter particles in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole.

Revised upper limit to energy extraction from a Kerr black hole.

We present a new upper limit on the energy that may be extracted from a Kerr black hole by means of particle collisions in the ergosphere (i.e., the "collisional Penrose process"). Earlier work on this subject has focused largely on particles with critical values of angular momentum falling into an extremal Kerr black hole from infinity and colliding just outside the horizon. While these collisions are able to reach arbitrarily high center-of-mass energies, it is very difficult for the reaction products to escape back to infinity, effectively limiting the peak efficiency of such a process to roughly 130%. When we allow one of the initial particles to have impact parameter b>2M, and thus not get captured by the horizon, it is able to collide along outgoing trajectories, greatly increasing the chance that the products can escape. For equal-mass particles annihilating to photons, we find a greatly increased peak energy of Eout≈6×Ein. For Compton scattering, the efficiency can go even higher, with Eout≈14×Ein, and for repeated scattering events, photons can both be produced and escape to infinity with Planck-scale energies.