Gravitational instability of polytropic spheres containing region of trapped null geodesics: a possible explanation of central supermassive black holes in galactic halos

Abstract

We study behaviour of gravitational waves in the recently introduced general relativistic polytropic spheres containing a region of trapped null geodesics extended around radius of the stable null circular geodesic that can exist for the polytropic index $N>2.138$ and the relativistic parameter, giving ratio of the central pressure $p_\mathrm{c}$ to the central energy density $ρ_\mathrm{c}$, higher than $σ= 0.677$. In the trapping zones of such polytropes, the effective potential of the axial gravitational wave perturbations resembles those related to the ultracompact uniform density objects, giving thus similar long-lived axial gravitational modes. These long-lived linear perturbations are related to the stable circular null geodesic and due to additional non-linear phenomena could lead to conversion of the trapping zone to a black hole. We give in the eikonal limit examples of the long-lived gravitational modes, their oscillatory frequencies and slow damping rates, for the trapping zones of the polytropes with $N \in (2.138,4)$. However, in the trapping polytropes the long-lived damped modes exist only for very large values of the multipole number $\ell>50$, while for smaller values of $\ell$ the numerical calculations indicate existence of fast growing unstable axial gravitational modes. We demonstrate that for polytropes with $N \geq 3.78$, the trapping region is by many orders smaller than extension of the polytrope, and the mass contained in the trapping zone is about $10^{-3}$ of the total mass of the polytrope. Therefore, the gravitational instability of such trapping zones could serve as a model explaining creation of central supermassive black holes in galactic halos or galaxy clusters.