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Science 2 April 1999:
Vol. 284. no. 5411, pp. 115 - 118
DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5411.115
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Reports

Superradiance in a Torus Magnetosphere Around a Black Hole

Maurice H. P. M. van Putten

The coalescence of a neutron star and a black hole in a binary system is believed to form a torus around a Kerr black hole. A similarly shaped magnetosphere then results from the remnant magnetic field of the neutron star. In the strong-field case, it contains a cavity for plasma waves located between the barrier of the gravitational potential and the surrounding torus. This cavity may be unstable to superradiance of electromagnetic waves. Superradiant amplification of such waves, initially excited by turbulence in the torus, should inflate into a bubble in a time as short as ~0.75 (1 percent/|epsilon |2)(M/7Modot ) seconds ~0.15 to 1.5 seconds, assuming an efficiency |epsilon |2 = 0.5 to 5 percent and a mass M = 7Modot . These bubbles may burst and repeat, of possible relevance to intermittency in cosmological gamma -ray bursts. The model predicts gamma -ray bursts to be anticorrelated with their gravitational wave emissions.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. E-mail: mvp{at}math.mit.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Detecting Energy Emissions from a Rotating Black Hole.
M. H. P. M. van Putten and A. Levinson (2002)
Science 295, 1874-1877
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