Light Curves of Chaotic Charged Hot-Spots in Curved Spacetime: Opening an Observational Window to Chaos

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that analyzing light curves from hot-spots in Kerr spacetime can reveal chaos, offering a new observational method to detect chaotic phenomena in astrophysics.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical framework for distinguishing chaotic from regular hot-spot light curves in curved spacetime using spectral analysis.

Findings

Chaotic hot-spots produce broad, continuous spectral peaks.

Regular hot-spots show isolated, sharp spectral peaks.

Light curves can serve as observational probes for chaos in astrophysics.

Abstract

The observed scarcity of chaotic phenomena in astronomy contrasts sharply with their theoretical significance, primarily due to the absence of a robust framework for detecting chaos. In this study, we numerically simulate the light curves of hot-spots in Kerr spacetime under the influence of an external asymptotically uniform electromagnetic field. Our results reveal a clear distinction between the light curves of chaotic and regular hot-spots, particularly in their power spectra: the latter display isolated, sharp peaks, while the former exhibit broad, continuous peaks of low amplitude. These findings highlight the potential of using light curves as a probe for chaotic orbits in curved spacetime.