Scattering of massless bosonic fields by Kerr black holes: On-axis incidence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how massless bosonic fields, specifically electromagnetic waves, scatter off rotating Kerr black holes when incident along the spin axis, providing new numerical results for scattering cross sections.

Contribution

It offers the first accurate numerical calculations of electromagnetic scattering cross sections for Kerr black holes and unifies the scattering behavior of all massless bosonic fields.

Findings

First accurate numerical results for electromagnetic Kerr scattering cross sections.

Unified description of Kerr scattering for all massless bosonic fields.

Insights into on-axis incidence scattering phenomena.

Abstract

We study the scattering of monochromatic bosonic plane waves impinging upon a rotating black hole, in the special case that the direction of incidence is aligned with the spin axis. We present accurate numerical results for electromagnetic Kerr scattering cross sections for the first time, and give a unified picture of the Kerr scattering for all massless bosonic fields.