Central charges for AdS black holes

Nontrivial diffeomorphisms act on the horizon of a generic 4D black holes and create distinguishing features referred to as soft hair. Amongst these are a left-right pair of Virasoro algebras with associated charges that reproduce the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy for Kerr black holes. In this paper we show that if one adds a negative cosmological constant, there is a similar set of infinitesimal diffeomorphisms that act non-trivially on the horizon. The algebra of these diffeomorphisms gives rise to a central charge. Adding a boundary counterterm, justified to achieve integrability, leads to well-defined central charges with cL = cR. The macroscopic area law for Kerr-AdS black holes follows from the assumption of a Cardy formula governing the black hole microstates.

Penrose Process: Its Variants and Astrophysical Applications

We present a review of the Penrose process and its modifications in relation to the Kerr black holes and naked singularities (superspinars). We introduce the standard variant of this process, its magnetic version connected with magnetized Kerr black holes or naked singularities, the electric variant related to electrically charged Schwarzschild black holes, and the radiative Penrose process connected with charged particles radiating in the ergosphere of magnetized Kerr black holes or naked singularities. We discuss the astrophysical implications of the variants of the Penrose process, concentrating attention to the extreme regime of the magnetic Penrose process leading to extremely large acceleration of charged particles up to ultra-high energy E∼1022 eV around magnetized supermassive black holes with mass M∼1010M⊙ and magnetic intensity B∼104 G. Similarly high energies can be obtained by the electric Penrose process. The extraordinary case is represented by the radiative Penrose process that can occur only around magnetized Kerr spacetimes but just inside their ergosphere, in contrast to the magnetic Penrose process that can occur in a more extended effective ergosphere determined by the intensity of the electromagnetic interaction. The explanation is simple, as the radiative Penrose process is closely related to radiated photons with negative energy whose existence is limited just to the ergosphere.

Gravitational footprints of black holes and their microstate geometries

We construct a family of non-supersymmetric extremal black holes and their horizonless microstate geometries in four dimensions. The black holes can have finite angular momentum and an arbitrary charge-to-mass ratio, unlike their supersymmetric cousins. These features make them and their microstate geometries astrophysically relevant. Thus, they provide interesting prototypes to study deviations from Kerr solutions caused by new horizon-scale physics. In this paper, we compute the gravitational multipole structure of these solutions and compare them to Kerr black holes. The multipoles of the black hole differ significantly from Kerr as they depend non-trivially on the charge-to-mass ratio. The horizonless microstate geometries (that are comparable in size to a black hole) have a similar multipole structure as their corresponding black hole, with deviations to the black hole multipole values set by the scale of their microstructure.

Gedanken experiments at high-order approximation: Kerr black hole cannot be overspun

Sorce and Wald proposed a new version of gedanken experiments to examine the weak cosmic censorship conjecture (WCCC) in Kerr-Newmann black holes. However, their discussion only includes the second-order approximation of perturbation and there exists an optimal condition such that the validity of the WCCC is determined by the higher-order approximations. Therefore, in this paper, we extended their discussions into the high-order approximations to study the WCCC in a nearly extremal Kerr black hole. After assuming that the spacetime satisfies the stability condition and the perturbation matter fields satisfy the null energy condition, based on the Noether charge method by Iyer and Wald, we completely calculate the first four order perturbation inequalities and discuss the corresponding gedanken experiment to overspin the Kerr black hole. As a result, we find that the nearly extremal Kerr black holes cannot be destroyed under the fourth-order approximation of perturbation. Then, by using the mathematical induction, we strictly prove the nth order perturbation inequality when the first (n − 1) order perturbation inequalities are saturated. Using these results, we discuss the first 100 order approximation of the gedanken experiments and find that the WCCC in Kerr black hole is valid under the higher-order approximation of perturbation. Our investigation implies that the WCCC might be strictly satisfied in Kerr black holes under the perturbation level.