Black hole Meissner effect and entanglement

Extremal black holes tend to expel magnetic and electric fields. Fields are unable to reach the horizon because the length of the black hole throat blows up in the extremal limit. The length of the throat is related to the amount of entanglement between modes on either side of the horizon. So it is natural to try to relate the black hole Meissner effect to entanglement. We derive the black hole Meissner effect directly from the low temperature limit of two-point functions in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum. Then we discuss several new examples of the black hole Meissner effect, its applications to astrophysics, and its relationship to gauge invariance

BMS invariance and the membrane paradigm

The Bondi-van der Burg-Metzner-Sachs (BMS) group is the asymptotic symmetry group of asymptotically flat spacetime. It is infinite dimensional and entails an infinite number of conservation laws. According to the black hole membrane paradigm, null infinity (in asymptotically flat spacetime) and black hole event horizons behave like fluid membranes. The fluid dynamics of the membrane is governed by an infinite set of symmetries and conservation laws. Our main result is to point out that the infinite set of symmetries and conserved charges of the BMS group and the membrane paradigm are the same. This relationship has several consequences. First, it sheds light on the physical interpretation of BMS conservation laws. Second, it generalizes the BMS conservation laws to arbitrary subregions of arbitrary null surfaces. Third, it clarifies the identification of the superrotation subgroup of the BMS group. We briefly comment on the black hole information problem.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

Energy extraction from boosted black holes: Penrose process, jets, and the membrane at infinity

Numerical simulations indicate that black holes carrying linear momentum and/or orbital momentum can power jets. The jets extract the kinetic energy stored in the black hole's motion. This could provide an important electromagnetic counterpart to gravitational wave searches. We develop the theory underlying these jets. In particular, we derive the analogues of the Penrose process and the Blandford-Znajek jet power prediction for boosted black holes. The jet power we find is $(v/2M)^2 \Phi^2/(4\pi)$, where $v$ is the hole's velocity, $M$ is its mass, and $\Phi$ is the magnetic flux. We show that energy extraction from boosted black holes is conceptually similar to energy extraction from spinning black holes. However, we highlight two key technical differences: in the boosted case, jet power is no longer defined with respect to a Killing vector, and the relevant notion of black hole mass is observer dependent. We derive a new version of the membrane paradigm in which the membrane lives at infinity rather than the horizon and we show that this is useful for interpreting jets from boosted black holes. Our jet power prediction and the assumptions behind it can be tested with future numerical simulations.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, updated to match Phys. Rev. D versio

Black hole jet power from impedance matching

Black hole jet power depends on the angular velocity of magnetic field lines, $\Omega_F$. Force-free black hole magnetospheres typically have $\Omega_F/\Omega_H \approx 0.5$, where $\Omega_H$ is the angular velocity of the horizon. We give a streamlined proof of this result using an extension of the classical black hole membrane paradigm. The proof is based on an impedance-matching argument between membranes at the horizon and infinity. Then we consider a general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulation of an accreting, spinning black hole and jet. We find that the theory correctly describes the simulation in the jet region. However, the field lines threading the horizon near the equator have much smaller $\Omega_F/\Omega_H$ because the force-free approximation breaks down in the accretion flow.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, updated to match Phys. Rev. D versio

Dynamic Density Functional theory for steady currents: Application to colloidal particles in narrow channels

We present the theoretical analysis of the steady state currents and density distributions of particles moving with Langevin dynamics, under the effects of an external potential displaced at constant rate. The Dynamic Density Functional (DDF) formalism is used to introduce the effects of the molecular interactions, from the equilibrium Helmholtz free energy density functional. We analyzed the generic form of the DDF for one-dimensional external potentials and the limits of strong and weak potential barriers. The ideal gas case is solved in a closed form for generic potentials and compared with the numerical results for hard-rods, with the exact equilibrium free energy. The results may be of relevance for microfluidic devices, with colloidal particles moving along narrow channels, if external driving forces have to compete with the brownian fluctuations and the interaction forces of the particles

Are entangled particles connected by wormholes? Support for the ER=EPR conjecture from entropy inequalities

If spacetime is built out of quantum bits, does the shape of space depend on how the bits are entangled? The ER=EPR conjecture relates the entanglement entropy of a collection of black holes to the cross sectional area of Einstein-Rosen (ER) bridges (or wormholes) connecting them. We show that the geometrical entropy of classical ER bridges satisfies the subadditivity, triangle, strong subadditivity, and CLW inequalities. These are nontrivial properties of entanglement entropy, so this is evidence for ER=EPR. We further show that the entanglement entropy associated to classical ER bridges has nonpositive interaction information. This is not a property of entanglement entropy, in general. For example, the entangled four qubit pure state |GHZ_4>=(|0000>+|1111>)/\sqrt{2} has positive interaction information, so this state cannot be described by a classical ER bridge. Large black holes with massive amounts of entanglement between them can fail to have a classical ER bridge if they are built out of |GHZ_4> states. States with nonpositive interaction information are called monogamous. We conclude that classical ER bridges require monogamous EPR correlations.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure