Superradiant scattering of electromagnetic fields from ringing black holes

TL;DR

This paper explores how electromagnetic waves scattering off ringing black holes can exhibit superradiance, suggesting potential electromagnetic signatures of black hole ringdown phases detectable by radio telescopes.

Contribution

It demonstrates for the first time that electromagnetic wave absorption cross sections can be superradiant in ringing Schwarzschild black holes, revealing a transient phenomenon linked to gravitational wave oscillations.

Findings

Superradiant electromagnetic scattering occurs in ringing black holes.

Transient nature of superradiance with a characteristic timescale.

Potential detectability of signals by existing radio telescopes like LOFAR.

Abstract

Detection of gravitational waves (GWs) paves the beginning of a new era of gravitational wave astronomy. Black holes (BHs) in their ringdown phase provide the cleanest signal of emitted GWs that imprint the fundamental nature of BHs under low energy perturbation. Apart from GWs, any complementary signature of ringing BHs can be of paramount importance. Motivated by this we analyzed the scattering of electromagnetic waves in such a background and demonstrated that the absorption cross section of a ringing Schwarzschild BH can be superradiant. Moreover, we have found out that such superradiant phenomena are transient in nature with a characteristic time scale equal to the GW oscillation time scale. We further point out that the existing ground-based Low Frequency Array (LOFAR), radio telescopes, may be able to detect such transient signals from BHs of mass range $M\sim 10^{-1} - 10^{-2} M_{\odot}$, which should necessarily be of primordial origin. Our present result opens up an intriguing possibility of observing the black hole merging phenomena through electromagnetic waves.