Free motion around black holes with discs or rings: between integrability and chaos - I

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the addition of thin rings or discs around Schwarzschild black holes induces chaos in geodesic motion, using exact solutions and various analytical tools to analyze the transition from regular to chaotic dynamics.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of chaos induction in black hole spacetimes with rings or discs, using exact Einstein solutions and multiple dynamical indicators.

Findings

Chaos increases with the mass and proximity of the ring/disc.

Geodesic motion transitions from regular to chaotic depending on parameters.

Different dynamical measures consistently indicate the growth of chaos.

Abstract

Geodesic dynamics is regular in the fields of isolated stationary black holes. However, due to the presence of unstable periodic orbits, it easily becomes chaotic under various perturbations. Here we examine what amount of chaoticity is induced in Schwarzschild space-time by a presence of an additional source. Following astrophysical motivation, we specifically consider thin rings or discs lying symmetrically around the hole, and describe the total field in terms of exact static and axially symmetric solutions of Einstein's equations. The growth of chaos in time-like geodesic motion is illustrated on Poincar\'e sections, on time series of position or velocity and their Fourier spectra, and on time evolution of the orbital `latitudinal action'. The results are discussed in dependence on the mass and position of the ring/disc and on geodesic parameters (energy and angular momentum). In the Introduction, we also add an overview of the literature.