Particle collisions near static spherically symmetric black holes

TL;DR

This paper extends the BSW scenario to static spherically symmetric black holes, showing that arbitrarily high collision energies are possible near the horizon with fine-tuned parameters, unlike previous findings for Schwarzschild black holes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that high-energy particle collisions near black hole horizons are possible in a broader class of static spherically symmetric spacetimes, not just Schwarzschild.

Findings

High center of mass energies can be achieved near static spherically symmetric black holes.

Fine-tuning of geodesic parameters enables infinite collision energies.

The result generalizes the BSW effect beyond Schwarzschild black holes.

Abstract

It has been shown by Ba\~{n}ados, Silk and West (BSW) that the center of mass energy (E_cm) of test particles starting from rest at infinity and colliding near the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole is always finite. In this communication, we extent the BSW scenario and study two particles with different energies colliding near the horizon of a static spherically symmetric black hole. Surprisingly, we find that even for the static spherically symmetric (i.e., Schwarzschild like) black holes it is possible to obtain an arbitrarily high E cm from the two test particles colliding near the horizon of a black hole, if one fine-tunes the parameters of geodesic motion.