arXiv subjects

Maurício Richartz

Publications and source records attributed to Maurício Richartz.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

End state of the experimental black-hole bomb

Rotating black holes can amplify incident waves through superradiant scattering. When these waves are confined, repeated amplification gives rise to the black-hole bomb instability, whose nonlinear evolution remains poorly understood despite its central role in models of bosonic clouds around astrophysical black holes. Here, we reproduce the black-hole bomb mechanism in a laboratory setting using a gravity simulator based on a draining vortex in superfluid helium. Surface waves propagating on the superfluid interface experience an effective rotating spacetime and undergo repeated superradiant amplification within a cylindrical cavity. By tuning the temperature and flow parameters, we achieve exponential growth of a low-frequency resonant mode, followed by the arrest of the instability and the formation of a long-lived non-equilibrium steady state. Using spatially and temporally resolved measurements, we identify nonlinear frequency shifts, harmonic generation, and coherent three- and four-wave mixing that redistribute energy among interacting modes. This novel end state of the experimental black-hole bomb highlights the role of nonlinear wave interactions in quenching the runaway growth expected from linear theory and governing the system's late-time dynamics. Our results establish a laboratory framework for investigating the nonlinear evolution of black-hole bombs, with implications for analogous phenomena involving ultralight bosonic fields around rotating black holes.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Black hole spectroscopy: from theory to experiment

The "ringdown" radiation emitted by oscillating black holes has great scientific potential. By carefully predicting the frequencies and amplitudes of black hole quasinormal modes and comparing them with gravitational-wave data from compact binary mergers we can advance our understanding of the two-body problem in general relativity, verify the predictions of the theory in the regime of strong and dynamical gravitational fields, and search for physics beyond the Standard Model or new gravitational degrees of freedom. We summarize the state of the art in our understanding of black hole quasinormal modes in general relativity and modified gravity, their excitation, and the modeling of ringdown waveforms. We also review the status of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA ringdown observations, data analysis techniques, and the bright prospects of the field in the era of LISA and next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave detectors.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Tachyonic modes as a resonant system in weakly curved stellar spacetimes

A real scalar field nonminimally coupled to the curvature of an astrophysical object can develop an effective potential that supports, alongside stable oscillatory solutions, a set of tachyonic modes with purely imaginary frequencies. Focusing on constant-density Newtonian stars, we show that the tachyonic sector behaves as a collection of decoupled inverted harmonic oscillators, whose quantization is naturally addressed within the rigged Hilbert space formalism. At the quantum level, this sector is described by resonant states, with mean lifetimes determined by the associated imaginary frequencies. To probe the physical implications of this framework, we compute the transition probability of an Unruh-DeWitt detector in a circular orbit. In the presence of tachyonic modes, the detector response acquires an additional finite Lorentzian profile that modifies the standard circular Unruh-like background.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Exceptional lines in the Kerr-Newman black hole spectrum

We investigate massive scalar perturbations of Kerr-Newman black holes, focusing on the $(\ell,m) = (1,1)$ quasinormal mode spectrum in the near-extremal regime. We identify a sequence of exceptional lines, at which overtone frequencies become degenerate, together with a corresponding sequence of exceptional points for massless fields. We analyze the geometric phases associated with these exceptional points by transporting the spectrum around closed loops in parameter space and examining the resulting permutation of quasinormal mode frequencies. We further show that these degeneracies are closely related to the branching of the spectrum into zero-damping and damped modes, and derive an analytic expression for the frequencies of the zero-damping modes in the extremal limit.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Ergodic Hysteresis of the Kerr black hole spectrum

We uncover a cascade of exceptional points (EPs) in the quasinormal mode spectrum of massive scalar perturbations of Kerr black holes, revealing an intricate non-Hermitian structure underlying their linear response. The cascade originates from a single damped mode that enters the extremal spectrum for sufficiently large field masses. We obtain evidence for an infinite sequence of EPs in the $(\ell,m)=(1,1)$ and $(2,2)$ sectors near the extremal limit, mediating the transition between damped and zero-damping modes. Each EP carries a geometric phase that enables adiabatic mode mixing across the entire overtone spectrum, a phenomenon we refer to as adiabatic ergodicity.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Black-hole spectroscopy from a giant quantum vortex

Black-hole spectroscopy aims to infer the fundamental properties of black holes by analysing the spectrum of gravitational waves emitted as they settle into equilibrium. These resonances, known as quasinormal modes (QNMs), decay rapidly, which limits the time-domain analysis of gravitational-wave data or numerical simulations to the longest-lived mode, except for a particularly loud event. Owing to the analogy between fields in curved spacetime and waves propagating in a flowing medium, QNMs can be equally excited in a laboratory. In these finite-sized systems, the QNM spectrum is expected to alter: compared to their counterparts in unbounded settings, the real frequencies of QNMs shift while their damping rates (imaginary frequencies) reduce, thereby enhancing their detectability. Here we show that multiple QNMs can be extracted from noise-driven interface waves surrounding a giant quantum vortex in superfluid helium-4, which emulates a spacetime geometry indicative of a rotating black hole. By resolving waves with different azimuthal periodicity, we find that both fundamental modes and their higher-frequency overtones are excited, and oscillate at frequencies given by the size of our system. Since similar effects may arise in astrophysical scenarios due to the interstellar medium or dark matter, gravity simulators now complement numerical and observational approaches to black-hole spectroscopy.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2026

Superradiant scattering by rotating black-bounce black holes

We investigate superradiant scattering off a rotating regular black hole described by a black-bounce metric which generalizes the Kerr spacetime of mass $M$ and specific angular momentum $a$ through a regularization parameter $p$ and two deformation exponents $(k,n)$. Focusing on massless $(\ell,m)=(1,1)$ scalar modes, we explore the parameter space and compute amplification factors by numerically integrating the separated radial Klein-Gordon equation. We track the peak amplification and the corresponding frequency across the $(a/M,p/M)$ parameter space for several combinations of $k$ and $n$. We find that increasing $n$ systematically enhances superradiance, whereas increasing $k$ tends to suppress it. In particular, certain configurations yield amplification levels up to 98% larger than the maximum amplification for standard Kerr black holes.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

When is a sloshing vortex an analogue black hole bomb?

Draining vortices provide a powerful platform for simulating black hole phenomena in tabletop experiments. In realistic fluid systems confined within a finite container, low-frequency waves amplified by the vortex are reflected at the walls, rendering the system unstable. This process, known in the gravitational context as the black hole bomb, manifests as a sloshing motion of the free surface. The analogy, however, becomes more nuanced when a realistic vortex core with a non-singular vorticity distribution is considered. We investigate this by analysing a non-draining Rankine vortex in the shallow-water and inviscid limits. At low circulation, the sloshing corresponds to an instability of the vorticity field, whereas at high circulation where fluid is expelled from the vortex core, the destabilising mechanism coincides with that of the black hole bomb. Our variational framework distinguishes the energetic contributions of vorticity and irrotational perturbations, offering new insight into the rotating-polygons instability reported by, e.g. Jansson et al. (2006). From the analogue-gravity perspective, we identify hollow core vortices as an optimal regime for exploring black-hole-like instabilities in fluids.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2025

Pseudospectrum of rotating analog black holes

Analyzing the stability of quasinormal modes (QNM) is essential for understanding black hole dynamics, particularly in the context of gravitational wave emissions and black hole spectroscopy. In this study, we employ the hyperboloidal approach to reformulate the quasinormal mode problem of a rotating analog black hole, effectively transforming it into an eigenvalue problem associated with a nonself-adjoint operator. Using this method, we examine the influence of rotation on the stability of the QNM spectrum, relying on the associated pseudospectrum for qualitative assessment. Our findings indicate that the prograde overtones become more stable as rotation increases. This work enhances our understanding of spectrum stability in rotating systems and expands the study of pseudospectra in non-spherically symmetric spacetimes, with potential for empirical testing in terrestrial laboratories.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2025

Probing the Unstable Spectrum of Schwarzschild-like Black Holes

We investigate the pseudospectrum of a Schwarzschild-like spacetime within the framework of black hole perturbation theory to analyze a counterintuitive assertion regarding the instability of quasinormal modes. Recent findings suggest that random perturbations to the effective potential associated with gravitational waves may enhance the stability of the underlying wave operator, thereby yielding a stable spectrum of randomly displaced quasinormal modes. Given the unphysical nature of such random perturbations, this work examines these findings within a spacetime that inherently exhibits a perturbed quasinormal spectrum. We find that, in contrast to the QNM spectrum of the Schwarzschild spacetime under random perturbations, the quasinormal spectrum of a Schwarzschild-like black hole deformed through a physically motivated implementation of the Rezzolla-Zhidenko parametrization is unstable. In particular, we show that the pseudospectra of these Schwarzschild-like black holes do not display the typical features associated with wave operators that yield stable quasinormal spectra. We corroborate our findings by computing the quasinormal spectra when additional (ad-hoc) deformations are added to the effective potential of the Rezzolla-Zhidenko black hole. We also argue that when multiple perturbation sources are present, identifying the origin of the instability may be difficult.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Massive scalar perturbations in Kerr Black Holes: near extremal analysis

We study quasinormal modes of massive scalar perturbations in Kerr black holes using the isomonodromic method. For arbitrary scalar masses $M μ$ and black hole spins $a/M$, we numerically determine the quasinormal frequencies for various orbital $\ell$, azimuthal $m$, and overtone $n$ numbers. In particular, we derive an analytic expression for frequencies of the zero-damping modes near the extremal limit $a/M \rightarrow 1$. For $\ell=m=1$, we reveal that the fundamental mode becomes a damped mode (rather than a zero-damping mode) if the scalar field is sufficiently heavy. By exploring the parameter space, we find numerical evidence for level-crossing between the longest-living mode and the first overtone at an exceptional point $(Mμ)_c \simeq 0.3704981$ and $(a/M)_c\simeq 0.9994660$.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Exceptional point and hysteresis in perturbations of Kerr black holes

We employ the isomonodromic method to study linear scalar massive perturbations of Kerr black holes for generic scalar masses $Mμ$ and generic black hole spins $a/M$. We find that the longest-living quasinormal mode and the first overtone coincide for $(Mμ)_c \simeq 0.3704981$ and $(a/M)_c\simeq 0.9994660$. We also show that the longest-living mode and the first overtone change continuously into each other as we vary the parameters around the point of degeneracy, providing evidence for the existence of a geometric phase around an exceptional point. We interpret our findings through a thermodynamic analogy.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Bounds on the mass of superradiantly unstable scalar fields around Kerr black holes

In this work we compute numerical bounds on the mass $μ$ of superradiantly unstable scalar fields in a Kerr black hole background using the continued fraction method. We show that the normalized upper bound on the mass $μ$ increases with the angular momentum number $\ell$ and the azimuthal number $m$, approaching the most stringent analytical bound known to date when $\ell=m \gg 1$. We also provide an analytical fit to the numerically determined mass bound as a function of the dimensionless spin parameter $a/M$ of the black hole with an accuracy of the order $0.1\%$ for the fundamental mode with $\ell=m=1$, and of the order $1\%$ for higher-order modes (up to $\ell=m=20$). We argue that this analytical fit is particularly useful in astrophysical scenarios, since the lowest $\ell=m$ modes are capable of producing the strongest observable imprints of superradiance.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2024

Tidal Forces in Majumdar-Papapetrou Spacetimes

Tidal disruption events occur when astrophysical objects are destroyed by black holes due to strong tidal force effects. Tidal forces have been studied in a variety of black hole spacetimes, including Reissner-Nordström and Kerr spacetimes. Despite the vast literature on the subject, tidal forces around black holes in static equilibrium have never been investigated before. The aim of this work is to fill in this gap and explore tidal forces in the Majumdar-Papapetrou spacetime describing two extremely charged binary black holes in equilibrium. We focus on tidal forces associated with radial and circular geodesics of massive neutral particles moving on the plane equidistant to the black holes. In particular, we study the behavior of the tidal forces as a function of the distance from the black holes and as a function of the energy of the geodesics. We also investigate the numerical solutions of the geodesic deviation equation for different initial conditions.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Dissipative Quantum Vortices and Superradiant Scattering

Inspired by Analogue Gravity, superradiance has been previously investigated in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). In this work, we revisit this problem by introducing dissipation to the system. After establishing the possibility of quantum vortices in dissipative BECs, we analyze the propagation of elementary excitations and demonstrate the existence of superradiant modes which can be interpreted in terms of the dissipation of ``antiparticles". Our findings support the possibility of superradiant scattering around dissipative quantum vortices and paves the way for future experimental realization of the phenomenon.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Comment on "Analog Schwarzschild-like geometry in fluids with external pressure''

In Ref. [1], exact (not only conformally related) analogue models for the Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordström spacetimes were found. The background non-relativistic fluid flow was sustained by an external body force which is not affected by the linearised fluctuations. Following a different route, by modelling the external force as the gradient of an external pressure, it was shown in~\cite{bilic} that the speed of sound is significantly modified. This effective speed of sound turns out to be inconsistent with the continuity equation. In this comment we analyse these two contradictory conclusions. We first show that the heuristic justification for the introduction of the external force via a variational principle given in Ref. [2] is conceptually incorrect. Then, by adding the external force appropriately, we show that the conclusions in [1] remain valid.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2022

Quasinormal modes, quasibound states, scalar clouds, and superradiant instabilities of a Kerr-like black hole

We use the continued fraction method to determine the eigenfrequencies associated with a scalar field around a Kerr-like black hole. The Kerr-like metric considered in this article is a subclass of the general parametrization of axisymmetric black holes proposed by Konoplya, Rezzolla and Zhidenko. In addition to its mass $M$ and specific angular momentum $a$, the black hole depends on a third parameter $η$, called the deformation parameter. We investigate how the deformation parameter affects the quasinormal modes and the quasibound states of a massive scalar field around the black hole. In particular, we compute the time scales associated with the superradiant instabilities of the scalar field in such a spacetime. The properties of stationary scalar clouds that could be formed by these instabilities are also discussed.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2021

Energy Extraction From Non-Coalescing Black Hole Binaries

We define and sketch the generalized ergosphere of the Majumdar-Papapetrou (MP) spacetime. In particular, we demonstrate the existence of closed orbits of negative energy that live outside the event horizon of such a spacetime. Relying on the Penrose process mechanism, we use these orbits to illustrate the possibility of energy extraction from a MP binary black hole by particle scattering. We also analyze the efficiency of the process, and construct explicit examples that optimize the extraction of energy. Lastly, we show how such concepts can be extended to a pair of non-coalescing Kerr black holes described by the Cabrera-Munguia, Manko and Ruiz (CMMR) metric.

gr-qc↗