Spinning Black Holes as Particle Accelerators

Abstract

It has recently been pointed out that particles falling freely from rest at infinity outside a Kerr black hole can in principle collide with arbitrarily high center of mass energy in the limiting case of maximal black hole spin. Here we aim to elucidate the mechanism for this fascinating result, and to point out its practical limitations, which imply that ultra-energetic collisions cannot occur near black holes in nature.

3 pages; v2: references added, minor modifications to match version published in PRL