2014/09/26 by Tomohiro Harada, Masashi Kimura · 1 voice · 5 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Experimental and Theoretical Physics Studies #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/31/24/243001
26 pages, 6 figures, accepted for publication in Classical and Quantum Gravity as a Topical Review, minor correction
arxiv published 2014/09/26 · arxiv created 2014/11/18 · openalex publication_date 2014/11/28 · arxiv updated 2015/06/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Rapidly rotating Kerr black holes can accelerate particles to arbitrarily high energy if the angular momentum of the particle is fine-tuned to some critical value. This phenomenon is robust as it is founded on the basic properties of geodesic orbits around a near-extremal Kerr black hole. On the other hand, the maximum energy of the acceleration is subjected to several physical effects. There is convincing evidence that the particle acceleration to arbitrarily high energy is one of the universal properties of general near-extremal black holes. We also discuss gravitational particle acceleration in more general context. This article is intended to provide a pedagogical introduction to and a brief overview of this topic for non-specialists.