Reply to "Comment on `Black Holes are neither Particle Accelerators nor Dark Matter Probes' "

TL;DR

This paper defends the original claim that the BSW effect, involving diverging collision energies near Kerr black holes, cannot be observed in nature, by clarifying misunderstandings and providing a concise proof.

Contribution

The authors clarify misconceptions about their previous work and reaffirm that the BSW effect is not observable in realistic astrophysical scenarios.

Findings

The BSW effect cannot be observed in nature.

Misunderstandings about the original paper are addressed.

A concise proof of the main result is provided.

Abstract

We respond to a recent criticism from Zaslavskii (arXiv:1301.3429v2 [gr-qc]) of our article, which appeared in Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 011102 (2013). We clarify the points of apparent disagreement, none of which relate to the central result of our original paper, which is the demonstration that the diverging center-of-masss energy of collisions in Kerr spacetime, known as the "BSW effect", can never be observed in nature. To emphasize this result, we present it in a more concise way which completely avoids any of the questions brought up by Zaslavskii.