2021/09/21 by Arman Tursunov, Bakhtinur Juraev, Zdeněk Stuchlík +1
Physics and Astronomy · #gr-qc #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.104.084099
8 pages, 4 figures, accepted to Phys. Rev. D
arxiv created 2021/09/21 · arxiv updated 2021/11/10
In many astrophysical scenarios the charge of the black hole is often neglected due to unrealistically large values of the charge required for the Reissner-Nordström spacetime metric. However, black holes may possess small electric charge due to various selective accretion mechanisms. In this paper we investigate the effect of a small hypothetical electric charge of a Schwarzschild black hole on the ionization of a freely falling neutral particle and subsequent escape of the ionized particle from the black hole. We show that the energy of ionized particle can grow ultra-high and discuss distinguishing signatures of particle acceleration by weakly charged black holes. We also discuss a possible application of the proposed mechanism as an alternative cosmic ray acceleration scenario. In particular we show that the Galactic centre supermassive black hole is capable to act as a PeVatron of protons. The presented mechanism can serve as a simple toy model of a non-rotating compact object acting as a particle accelerator with a potential astrophysical implementations related to the cosmic ray physics and beyond.