The charged black-hole bomb: A lower bound on the charge-to-mass ratio of the explosive scalar field

The well-known superradiant amplification mechanism allows a charged scalar field of proper mass μ and electric charge q to extract the Coulomb energy of a charged Reissner–Nordström black hole. The rate of energy extraction can grow exponentially in time if the system is placed inside a reflecting cavity which prevents the charged scalar field from escaping to infinity. This composed black-hole-charged-scalar-field-mirror system is known as the charged black-hole bomb  . Previous numerical studies of this composed physical system have shown that, in the linearized regime, the inequality q/μ>1q/μ>1 provides a necessary condition for the development of the superradiant instability. In the present paper we use analytical techniques to study the instability properties of the charged black-hole bomb in the regime of linearized scalar fields. In particular, we prove that the lower bound qμ>rm/r−−1rm/r+−1 provides a necessary condition for the development of the superradiant instability in this composed physical system (here r±r± are the horizon radii of the charged Reissner–Nordström black hole and rmrm is the radius of the confining mirror). This analytically derived lower bound on the superradiant instability regime of the composed black-hole-charged-scalar-field-mirror system is shown to agree with direct numerical computations of the instability spectrum.