Motion of charged particle in Reissner-Nordstrom spacetime: A Jacobi metric approach

Abstract

The present work discusses motion of neutral and charged particles in Reissner - Nordstrom spacetime. The constant energy paths are derived in a variational principle framework using the Jacobi metric which is parameterized by conserved particle energy. Of particular interest is the case of particle charge and Reissner-Nordstrom black hole charge being of same sign since this leads to a clash of opposing forces - gravitational (attractive) and Coulomb (repulsive). Our paper aims to compliment the recent works of Pugliese, Quevedo and Ruffini [1,2]. The energy dependent Gaussian curvature (induced by Jacobi metric), plays an important role in classifying the trajectories.

22 pages, 11 figures, extensively modified and extended version with major results unchanged, new section with discussions on Gaussian curvature included, references added; version accepted in EPJC