Electrification of a non-rotating black hole

TL;DR

This paper investigates the relativistic process by which a non-rotating black hole can acquire electric charge from surrounding plasma, affecting the properties of particle orbits and potentially altering observational signatures like the black hole shadow.

Contribution

It provides a relativistic analysis of black hole electrification, extending previous non-relativistic models and exploring the impact on particle orbits and observable phenomena.

Findings

Black hole can acquire charge depending on plasma temperature ratios.

Charged black holes have larger ISCO radii for protons and electrons.

Implications for black hole shadow size and energy estimates from accretion.

Abstract

Zajacek et al made an interesting theoretical prediction on the electrification of a non-rotating black hole; if a non-rotating black hole is surrounded by plasma composed of protons and electrons, it will acquire electric charge due to the large difference of the inertial mass of a proton and that of an electron. Furthermore they revealed the effects of the electric charge of the black hole on the surrounding plasma. Since their results mainly rely on non-relativistic analyses, we study the same subject through relativistic analyses in this paper. By investigating a test particle in the Schwarzschild spacetime, we find that if initial velocities of protons and electrons far from a black hole follow the Maxwell distribution, the black hole can acquire electric charge whose value depends on the ratio of temperature of the proton and that of the electron. We also show that if the black hole acquires the electric charge, the radii of the innermost stable circular orbit (ISCO) and the specific energy of a charged particle on ISCO can be very different from those of a neutral particle. In contrast to the result obtained by Zajacek et al, we find that the ISCO radii of a proton and an electron are necessarily larger than that of a neutral test particle as long as the black hole acquires the charge. The large ISCO radius might lead to a larger angular diameter of a black hole shadow and a different estimate of the released energy due to the accretion of plasma from the estimate based on the assumption of electric neutrality of the central black hole.