Non-linear collisional Penrose process: How large energy can a black hole release?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the maximum energy that can be extracted from a black hole via the collisional Penrose process, accounting for self-gravity effects, and finds an upper bound consistent with black hole area laws.

Contribution

It introduces a fully self-gravity-inclusive analysis of the collisional Penrose process, revealing an upper energy extraction limit beyond previous test particle approximations.

Findings

Identifies an upper bound on energy extraction consistent with the black hole area law.

Demonstrates scenarios achieving near-maximum energy extraction without high-energy collisions.

Shows the importance of back reaction effects in realistic energy extraction limits.

Abstract

Energy extraction from a rotating or charged black hole is one of fascinating issues in general relativity. The collisional Penrose process is one of such extraction mechanisms and has been reconsidered intensively since Banados, Silk and West pointed out the physical importance of very high energy collisions around a maximally rotating black hole. In order to get results analytically, the test particle approximation has been adopted so far. Successive works based on this approximation scheme have not yet revealed the upper bound on the efficiency of the energy extraction because of lack of the back reaction. In the Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime, by fully taking into account the self-gravity of the shells, we find that there is an upper bound on the extracted energy, which is consistent with the area law of a black hole. We also show one particular scenario in which the almost maximum energy extraction is achieved even without the Banados-Silk-West collision.